Freed Hostage Tells of Terrifying Time in Kuwait

Randall N. Trinh, a U.S. citizen held hostage as a so-called human shield at an Iraqi factory until two days ago, said Monday that he lived an even more terrifying ordeal in Kuwait immediately after the Iraqi invasion.

In a brief interview with reporters at his daughter’s Fullerton apartment after his arrival at Los Angeles International Airport, Trinh said his life was repeatedly threatened by Iraqi military authorities looking for American and British citizens.

The 49-year-old structural engineer, a naturalized U.S. citizen who had been working in Kuwait for the Santa Fe International Corp. when Iraq invaded, said he was able to fool authorities into believing he was a Vietnamese citizen. He moved fairly freely about the city, he said, shopping and running errands for others in the compound where he lived.

“When the Iraqis came to the door they asked if there were any Americans there and they said ‘If you are lying we will kill you,’ Trinh said in broken English. “Kuwait was terrifying, but Baghdad was not so bad.”

Trinh said his unease while in Kuwait was heightened as he grew ill from a peptic ulcer. He soon ran out of medicine but was too fearful to seek hospital treatment.

He said he left his apartment in Kuwait City on Aug. 10 and traveled to Baghdad after Iraqi authorities ensured that all foreigners would be given safe passage out of Kuwait. Once in Baghdad, however, he and other American citizens were denied exit from Iraq and were taken to the Al Mansur Hotel.

Trinh said he was treated well while in the hotel.

“It was very nice, I had no complaints and the food was great.”

Iraqi authorities also became concerned with his health and Trinh said he saw at least six specialists who diagnosed his ulcer and gave him medication.

However, his ordeal again became tense when he was moved early last week to a factory as part of Iraq’s practice of keeping foreigners at strategic sites to discourage attack by Western forces. The former hostage said he thinks the factory, about 62 miles north of Baghdad, was involved in making explosives or chemical weapons.

Trinh said conditions at the installation were poor. The food was meager, only bread and eggs.

When his ulcer flared up again, he was hospitalized. A New York-based group, Fellowship of Reconciliation, was able to secure his and three other Americans’ release.

Trinh was greeted privately in a U.S. Customs’ waiting room at the airport by his wife, Kim Yen Trinh, and their two daughters, Christy, 23, and Suzie, 21.

Weary from the flight, he declined to speak to the crush of reporters who also had awaited his arrival. He was whisked out a VIP entrance by airport security.

Kim Trinh said before her husband’s arrival Monday that the family had planned a big fish dinner to celebrate his return home.

“That is one of his favorite meals, and I’ve been working to prepare it all day,” she said. “I think he will enjoy this, and we’re just going to relax and have a good time.”

Trinh, who immigrated to the United States with his family in 1975 just before the fall of Saigon, said he is ready to make a new start--again.

“I’m very, very lucky to be released,” he said. “I’m going to take a few days off, get a checkup and then start looking for a new job.”