Kidnapers Offer U.S. Hostage Deal
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BEIRUT — Muslim kidnapers issued a photograph Thursday of two American hostages with a handwritten statement hinting at freedom for the captives if the United States would support the Palestinian uprising in Israeli-occupied territories.
The note from the Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine, a group believed linked to Iran, was delivered to a Western news agency in Beirut with a Polaroid picture of a smiling Alann Steen, 49, of Boston, and Jesse Jonathan Turner, 41, a native of Boise, Ida. They among 17 foreigners, including nine Americans, held captive in Lebanon.
Steen, Turner, Robert Polhill, 54, originally of New York City, and Mithileshwar Singh, 60, an Indian who is a legal resident alien of the United States, were kidnaped Jan. 24, 1987, from the campus of the U.S.- affiliated Beirut University College by gunmen posing as police.
The statement, written in Arabic, demanded that the United States undertake an initiative within one week in support of the Palestinian uprising.
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