California Couple, One Other American Among 174 Released Hostages

Iraq sent home 174 Western hostages Friday, including a California couple and a 10-year-old “human shield” who had promised to trade his allowance for his family’s freedom.

A third American who had been shot trying to escape the Iraqis also was released, but at least two other Americans who had been promised exit papers were prevented from boarding the special Lufthansa Airbus from Baghdad at the last minute, witnesses said.

Former Chancellor Willy Brandt brought the mostly German group out of Iraq after meeting twice with President Saddam Hussein on a sharply criticized private mission to Baghdad.

Brandt, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his Ostpolitik rapprochement with what was then the East Bloc, went to Iraq on Monday in defiance of Western agreements to deal with the situation as an alliance.

“This policy of all or nothing is disastrous,” said Brandt, who had hoped to bring all 400 German hostages home.

Washington has sought to maintain a united front within the international coalition lined up against Iraq, but some foreign individuals such as Japan’s former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone have persuaded Hussein to release selected groups of their countrymen. And political figures from Denmark and New Zealand are planning similar trips to Baghdad to seek freedom for hostages.

The former hostages appeared weary but in good health Friday as they greeted tearful relatives in a hangar at Frankfurt International Airport.

The wounded American, Miles Hoffman, a 33-year-old financial analyst from Georgia, was quickly taken off the plane and taken to the U.S. Air Force hospital in nearby Wiesbaden. Hoffman, who had been working for the Kuwaiti government when Iraqi troops invaded in August, was shot in the forearm the following month as he apparently tried to escape through a window when Iraqi soldiers entered his apartment.

When he boarded the aircraft in Baghdad earlier in the day, Hoffman had his arm in a cast and seemed to be in pain, the Associated Press reported.

The returning hostages included 120 Germans, 20 Italians, 12 British, 10 Dutch, three Belgians, the three Americans and a scattering of people of other nationalities.

“Were we worried? We were worried for 100 days,” said Don Swanke, 66, of Westlake Village, who was released along with his wife.

“Worried, but not afraid,” said Brenda Swanke, 43.

“She’s strong,” her husband laughed. “I’m the chicken.”

The Swankes were taken to the U.S. military hospital for checkups before making plans to fly home to their four children and several grandchildren.

Swanke said he was suffering from a viral infection and had lost about 10 pounds.

The couple were held prisoner with 13 others at a missile assembly plant in Mosul, about 250 miles north of Baghdad.

They said Brandt personally intervened to secure their release when the Iraqis refused to return the Swankes’ passports the night before the flight from Baghdad.

They said at least two other Americans who had been promised their freedom were held back at the last minute when the Iraqis declared that their papers were not in order.

The Swankes identified one of the disappointed hostages as Desmond Bailey of Houston and the other as a man they knew only as “Sam.”

Also used as a “human shield” was 10-year-old Karim Gorschlueter, whose poignant letter to Hussein apparently won his family’s release.

“I’m sure that’s what did it,” said Ewald Gorschlueter, Karim’s father, a German businessman who had lived in Iraq for 17 years with his Syrian-born wife.

He said Karim received a lot of publicity and sympathy in the state media after writing to the Iraqi leader a week ago.

The boy promised that if his family were freed, he would spend his entire allowance on food to send back to Iraqi children.

His father said the family of four was held at an industrial site 85 miles southeast of Baghdad, the capital.