Ex-Hostage Reed Reunites With Mother, Makes Plea for Release of Other Captives

Freed hostage Frank H. Reed’s joyous reunion Sunday with his 91-year-old mother was tempered with an urgent plea for the speedy release of the six Americans still held captive.

“They aren’t well,” he implored after arriving at Boston’s Logan International Airport. “They are sick. I promise you they are sick. Let us not forget them.”

Reed, 57, who has been undergoing medical tests at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, saw his mother for the first time in eight years in a tearful airport reunion before meeting reporters.

“He said to me, ‘you’re a great mother.’ We shed tears of joy,” said Leota Sprague, who was too weak to join her son earlier. “I say rejoice, give thanks.”

“She looks lovely,” said Reed, with his mother at his side. She was in a wheelchair.

The Reed family, including his wife, Fahima, and 9-year-old son, Tarek, traveled by motorcade to his daughter’s house in this suburb north of Boston, where cheering neighbors and 100 yellow ribbons awaited the hometown celebrity. The suburb of 56,000 planned a parade for Reed on Tuesday.

Reed was freed April 30 after 44 months in captivity in Lebanon. He was home for a brief Memorial Day break but was scheduled to return Wednesday to the Malcolm Grow Medical Center at Andrews Air Force Base.

Reed said doctors were trying to do some “medical sleuthing” to find out why he is so anemic.

“We’re trying to do some things to verify the contusions and results of the beatings I had for trying to escape twice, not really being left alone until a few months ago,” Reed said. “Despite it all, they say my heart’s fine, my lungs are fine, my liver’s fine.”

Reed also spoke out on behalf of the other hostages he said were in ill health. His comments contradicted those he made at a Washington news conference May 6, when he told reporters the American hostages “look physically wonderful.”

“Terry Anderson is not well,” he said of the longest held of the hostages. Anderson, chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press, is in his sixth year of captivity.

“Thomas Sutherland is not well,” added Reed, who last saw the hostages more than a year ago. “And I told the people in Washington that they are not well. We must do something. We must get the other hostages free somehow.”

The other Americans still held hostage are Joseph J. Cicippio, 59, who was acting comptroller at the American University in Beirut; Edward A. Tracy, 59, a west Beirut resident; Alann Steen, 51, a communications instructor at Beirut University College, and Jesse Turner, 42, a professor of mathematics and computer science at Beirut University College.

A banner hanging in front of the home of Reed’s daughter, Marilyn Langston, read, “Free at Last--Frank Reed, April 30, 1990.” Reed has two grown daughters from a previous marriage.

BACKGROUND

Frank Reed, 57, was released April 30 after 44 months in captivity in Lebanon. He was the head of the private Lebanese International School when he was abducted from his car by gunmen near the Beirut Airport in 1986. He was freed eight days after another American hostage, Robert Polhill, was released. They were the first Americans to be freed in 3 1/2 years.