Ex-Hostage Reed Tells of Beatings : Lebanon: The angry American educator says he made two escape attempts. His captors broke his jaw, nose, ribs and feet as punishment.

Former hostage Frank H. Reed, appearing stronger and angrier at the end of a week of freedom, said Sunday that his kidnapers in Lebanon beat him severely, broke his jaw, his nose, some ribs and his feet after two unsuccessful escape attempts.

In what he described as “four days of hell” after his first attempt, Reed said he was struck more than 200 times about his head and body, and his legs and feet were beaten with a metal rod.

“As part of my punishment, and I won’t go into the details of that, they tried to break my feet and hit my feet many, many times with . . . a cement reinforcement rod, and my feet have been slightly broken, which is an Arab way of punishing you to remind you of what you did,” he said. “I did everything in my power not to cry out.”

After a second escape attempt and a beating with a rifle two days later, he said he was kept in solitary confinement for at least two years. He did not clearly outline the dates involved, but he noted that following his release from solitary confinement, he was chained to the wall or a radiator in an apartment, blindfolded and forced to lie on his back 24 hours a day.

Reed lost 45 pounds and said he is suffering from severe anemia and still feels pain as a result of the beatings.

“Twice I tried to escape from the clutches of Hezbollah and twice, obviously, I was caught,” he said. “The first time that I was caught I spent about four days of hell. Thank God it didn’t kill me.”

The 57-year-old educator from Massachusetts was freed by his Islamic kidnapers last Monday, eight days after the release of another American hostage, Robert Polhill.

Reed provided the first details of his ordeal at a press conference in a suburban Washington hotel in which he called on the U.S. government to open talks to free the remaining six Americans and 10 other Westerners held in Lebanon.

“The duty . . . is to negotiate even if you have to get in bed with the devil,” he said.

Diplomats from Iran and Syria, which assisted in freeing Reed and Polhill, said Sunday that further hostage releases depend on “goodwill gestures” from the United States, specifically pressure on Israel to release an estimated 500 Shiites imprisoned in Southern Lebanon.

“The easiest gesture is to release these hostages,” Kamal Kharrazi, Iran’s U.N. ambassador, said. “And I believe it’s very easy for the United States government to contact Israel and encourage them to release these hostages.”

Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N. Y.), one of three senators who attended Reed’s press conference, urged Israel to release its prisoners.

“Any nation that wishes to be treated as a law-abiding nation must show respect for the laws to which it is bound,” Moynihan said. “That applies to Israel. They cannot hold hostages. We hope they hear us.”

President Bush has refused to open direct negotiations with hostage takers and has rebuffed Iranian suggestions that the United States must take some action to reward Iran and Syria for their part in winning the release of Reed and Polhill. Instead, Bush has said, the United States will offer goodwill gestures only after all the American hostages are released.

Although Bush has encouraged the release of “all hostages,” the White House has refused to say whether it considers the prisoners held by Israel to be hostages. Other Administration officials have suggested that the United States might welcome Israeli action, but as one Administration source closely involved with hostage negotiations put it, Israel “knows exactly what to do. We don’t need to bang them over the head.”

The remaining American hostages are Terry A. Anderson, chief Mideast correspondent for the Associated Press, Thomas Sutherland, Joseph J. Cicippio, Edward Austin Tracy, Alann Steen and Jesse Jonathan Turner.

During his 44 months in captivity, Reed said he crossed paths with Anderson and was held in the same apartment house as Irishman Brian Keenan and Briton John McCarthy. He said all three men were in excellent physical condition when he last saw them.

For more than 3 1/2 years, Reed said he was on his back, except when he was exercising, eating or making trips to the toilet.

The beatings and abuse “went on and on and on for a long time,” he said. “Then sometime about a year (after his second escape attempt), one pig of a man who constantly haggled me broke my ribs, kicked my ribs in on the right side. I’d managed somehow to push them back lying on my back.”

Along with the beatings, Reed said the ordeal of a hostage is worse than that of a prisoner because of the uncertainty and isolation.

“Prisoners have a sentence,” he said. “What we were faced with was endless time. Prisoners have visitors, exercise. We had none of those things. I have been lying on my back for 3 1/2 years, chained to a wall or a radiator.”

He said he used matches to draw a picture of his 9-year-old son, Tarek, on the back of his door and a picture of his wife, Fahima, on the ceiling above his bed.

Reed and Polhill were the first American hostages released since 1983, when three others were freed as part of the secret arms-for-hostages deal between the United States and Iran.

Polhill said at the press conference that he was not mistreated during more than three years in captivity. “I was as shocked as you were to hear what Frank was saying,” he said.

Reed, smiling and singing, arrived at the press conference with his wife and son and two daughters. With his arm around Tarek, Reed said he was looking forward to a fishing trip with his son at Sebago Lake in Maine.

“I’m going to catch some salmon, we hope,” he said.

Reed was beaming and cheerful.

“I’m feeling OK,” he said. “I’m a little weak from not having lived very much, no living muscles.”

Reed’s doctors reported Saturday they were pleased with how he looked even though his weight had dropped from about 185 pounds to about 140. Doctors said their early evaluations were good and they expected Reed to remain at the Andrews Air Force Base, Md., medical center probably until the end of the week.