Iraq Hands Over 15 More U.S. Prisoners

By TRACY WILKINSON

March 6, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia —

Iraq handed over what it called its last allied prisoners of war on Tuesday, and almost 300 Iraqis captured in the Persian Gulf War were scheduled to be repatriated today after rain delayed their return home.

Iraqi officials released 35 prisoners into the custody of the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to the Red Cross and Baghdad Radio.

The group included 15 Americans, one of them a woman--the second female prisoner to be freed by the Iraqis. There were also nine Britons, nine Saudis, a Kuwaiti and an Italian.

“Iraq has completed the handing over of all prisoners of the countries that had taken part in military operations against Iraq,” said an Iraqi Foreign Ministry statement read on Baghdad Radio.

Plans to fly the group immediately to Saudi Arabia were postponed after a rare rainstorm swept through the northern Arabian desert and high winds buffeted the Iraqi capital.

The bad weather also delayed the repatriation of 294 Iraqi prisoners of war--out of tens of thousands held by allied forces. Under the now-delayed plan, they were to have been picked up from a camp at King Khalid Military City in Saudi Arabia and flown to Baghdad, and the return flight would have brought out the 35 allied prisoners.

The exchange is now scheduled for this morning. The allied prisoners were spending Monday night in Red Cross lodgings in Baghdad.

One of them, Army Maj. Rhonda L. Cornum of Freeville, N.Y., is the second American woman released by Iraq.

“Rhonda’s little but she’s tough. She can handle herself in a tough situation,” Cornum’s mother, Jen, told the Associated Press from East Aurora, N.Y., 25 miles southeast of Buffalo.

Cornum was reported missing over the weekend while on a search-and-rescue mission in a Chinook helicopter, her parents said.

Of the 14 other Americans released Tuesday, eight had been listed as missing in action and six as prisoners of war.

“I’m sure they are being treated very well by my colleagues,” said Jean Rigo Poulo, a spokesman in Riyadh for the Swiss-based international humanitarian agency.

Allied forces had demanded the release of all POWs as a condition for a permanent cease-fire in the Gulf War.

The release of the 35 follows the return Monday of 10 prisoners of war, including six Americans. One of those was Army Specialist Melissa Rathbun-Nealy of Newaygo, Mich., the first woman freed by Iraq.

If the two groups freed Monday and Tuesday do in fact represent all of Iraq’s American POWs, then 28 Americans remain unaccounted for, according to the latest statistics available from the U.S. Central Command in Riyadh.

“It’s not the end of the issue,” Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams said in Washington on Tuesday.

The Pentagon on Tuesday also updated the U.S. casualty toll in the 43-day war to 115 dead and 330 wounded. Tens of thousands of Iraqis were believed killed.

Meanwhile, the fate of Kuwaiti civilians kidnaped by Iraq is much less clear because “the number is so uncertain,” said a senior Bush Administration official.

The Kuwaitis were carried northward early last week by retreating Iraqi soldiers when the occupation of Kuwait collapsed as allied forces were pushing into Kuwait and southern Iraq.

“The Iraqis are claiming they only have 6,000 to 7,000,” the official said. “The Kuwaitis are saying tens of thousands. We really don’t have a good fix.”

The six Americans released Monday, after a seven-hour journey overland to Jordan, arrived Tuesday aboard the Navy hospital ship Mercy in the Persian Gulf off the island emirate of Bahrain.

Doctors pronounced the group in good health, and doubts were cast on earlier Bush Administration reports that the prisoners were mistreated or tortured by their Iraqi captors.

“I’m pleased to report that they are all in good shape and in good spirits,” said Air Force Col. Wynn Mabry, a flight surgeon who headed a team of doctors that gave medical checkups to the former prisoners. The medical team included two psychiatrists who have worked with American ex-POWs of the Vietnam War.

Among the recovering former Iraqi prisoners is Navy Lt. Jeffrey N. Zaun, 28, whose swollen and cut face peered from television screens all over the world as he haltingly recited a statement critical of the war effort. Zaun, a bombardier shot down over Iraq, became a symbol of the American prisoners who were were reportedly receiving brutal treatment in Iraq.

But Mabry said Tuesday that Zaun probably suffered the injuries when he ejected from his plane. The lieutenant, Mabry said, did not report having been brutalized.

A military source in Riyadh, who spent time aboard the Mercy with the freed American prisoners, also reported that he did not hear any tales of beatings.

But Zaun’s father told reporters that his son was kept blindfolded during much of his captivity and could hear allied bombs falling.

Rathbun-Nealy, 20, told her family that she had spent her imprisonment in solitary confinement in a cell and passed time by singing gospel songs. “I’m probably the only prisoner of war to gain weight,” she was quoted as telling relatives.

Zaun maintained his equilibrium by remembering stories of how a Navy captain and admiral had coped with being held prisoner by the North Vietnamese, according to the Riyadh-based source.

And Navy Lt. Lawrence R. Slade used his “photographic memory” to catalogue each fellow prisoner of war he ran across: the man’s name, hometown, type of aircraft and other information. He may have run into as many as 40 POWs.

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described the former prisoners’ first few hours aboard the Mercy as “near-jubilant.”

“Just as folks do,” he said, “some folks clam up, some folks talk a lot, you had that among the six. A lot of people really wanted to kind of gush forth with tales.”

The six spoke to Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the commander of U.S. forces in the Gulf, shortly after boarding the hospital ship.

Times staff writer David Lauter in Washington contributed to this report.

FREED AMERICANS

Here is a list of prisoners released on Tuesday by Iraq:

Air Force Capt. William F. Andrews, 32, Syracuse, N.Y.

Marine Capt. Michael C. Berryman, 28, Cleveland, Okla.

Army Maj. Rhonda L. Cornum, 36, Freeville, N.Y.

Army Sgt. Troy Allen Dunlap, 20, Massac, Ill.

Marine Capt. Russell A.C. Sanborn, 27, Havelock, N.C.

Marine Maj. Joseph J. Small III, 39, Racine, Wis.

Army Sgt. Daniel J. Stamaris Jr., 31, Boise, Ida.

Air Force Capt. Richard D. Storr, 29, Spokane, Wash.