Belgians Doubt Story That Four Hostages Will Go Free

A Beirut newspaper said Tuesday that the radical Palestinian faction of terrorist Abu Nidal would release four Belgian hostages today.

A Belgian government source dismissed the report by the newspaper al Lima, however, saying that “it is not the first time this paper has had a story like that.”

In Geneva, meanwhile, Swiss relief worker Elio Erriquez arrived home after what he described as 10 months of “living death” as a hostage in Lebanon.

“Detention is like--and I think I’m not exaggerating--living death . . . . A dog was better than we were,” he told reporters at the airport in Geneva as he struggled to hold back tears.

Erriquez was handed over to Syrian security men in Muslim West Beirut late Monday by a group calling itself the Palestinian Revolutionary Faction. He was turned over to the Swiss ambassador in Damascus early Tuesday.

The front-page report on the Belgians, attributed to unidentified Western diplomatic sources, said the four would be released today in a deal that includes the release of convicted Palestinian terrorist Sa’eed Nasser “by a special pardon signed by the king of Belgium.”

It said the deal was worked out between Belgian officials and the Revolutionary Council of Fatah and that a Belgian press team is to arrive in Lebanon “in the next few hours to cover the release of the four hostages.” It did not disclose further details.

The four, reported captured in 1987 aboard their boat off the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip, are Emmanuel Houtekins; his wife, Godelieve Kets; their son, Laurent, and their daughter, Valerie.