Ex-French Captive Calls for ‘Noise’ to Aid U.S. Hostages

Thursday was the 41st birthday of Terry A. Anderson, the chief Middle East correspondent of the Associated Press who has been held hostage in Lebanon for 3 1/2 years, and former French hostage Jean-Paul Kauffmann used the occasion to urge that more “noise” be made to free Anderson and other foreign hostages.

“That I am free today is thanks to the French press and the French public,” Kauffmann, a journalist, said at a gathering here. “I am a living example of the fact that making noise helps free hostages.”

For about half of his three years as a hostage, Kauffmann said, he was chained to a wall in a cell adjacent to Anderson’s. At all times, he said, the hostages were blindfolded, their feet or wrists chained. For light, he said, there was a 100-watt bulb that “went out during every bombardment.”

Kauffmann, 44, and two other Frenchmen--the last of the French hostages held by Lebanese Shia Muslim extremists--were released May 4. Describing himself as “someone who escaped from hell,” the magazine journalist credits his freedom largely to a massive publicity campaign waged on behalf of the French hostages.

“Every day, twice a day,” he said, “photographs of the French hostages and the number of days they had been incarcerated” were broadcast on French television.

“No Frenchman seeing this could tolerate the injustice of the situation,” he said.

Kauffmann disputed the notion expressed by some U.S. and British officials that talking about the hostages raises the price of the ransom.

“That is not true,” he said. “That is crazy.”

He said he had talked with State Department officials since his release but that “it is not my job to advise the Americans.” Still, he said, “to talk with the captors is not synonymous with caving in.”

Also present at the ceremony marking Anderson’s birthday was his sister, Peggy Say of Cadiz, Ky.

“Send the message to this Administration that it is OK to cut a deal,” Say said. “Never has a hostage been freed without concessions being made.”