Ex-Hostage Sutherland, Family Reunited in Bay Area

Freed Middle East hostage Thomas Sutherland was reunited with his entire family Monday after six years of separation, and embraced his 4 1/2-year-old granddaughter for the first time.

“We are going to have a very, very happy Thanksgiving,” Sutherland said, cradling his granddaughter, Simone, at a news conference held after he met privately with his daughter, Ann Sutherland.

“It was marvelous,” Sutherland said of meeting Simone. “She let me hold her. (Ann) said she was normally very shy with strangers, and I was a stranger.” Sutherland said he learned he had a granddaughter on St. Valentine’s Day, 1988, while in captivity.

Sutherland arrived Monday evening in the Bay Area after flying from Germany, where he had spent several days after his release last week by Iranian-backed Shiite Muslims in Lebanon.

Other family members had flown to Germany to accompany Sutherland home. Ann Sutherland is 8 1/2 months pregnant with her second child, and was advised against flying with her mother and sisters to meet her father.

“There is no way to describe our feelings. I’m just glad to have him home,” Ann Sutherland said at the San Francisco news conference.

The former hostage said that the reunions with his family were the best moments since his release along with hostage Terry Waite.

“The moment that Jean and Kit walked through the door in Damascus . . . and when I walked through the door to see Ann and her family,” Sutherland said.

“Tomorrow, I guess we will put our feet out and find out what’s been going on,” he said.

The family planned a quiet Thanksgiving dinner in the Berkeley hills.

At the news conference, Sutherland said he was looking forward to a traditional holiday dinner of turkey, mashed potatoes, cherry pie and ice cream. “Oh, I missed ice cream,” he said.

At a press conference during a stopover in Texas, Sutherland, 60, said his captors are “running a little late” on their pledge to release more hostages within a short time.

“That’s not unusual for that particular organization. I’m still very hopeful,” he said. “I think they are convinced now that hostage-taking doesn’t help.”

Sutherland said his captors are “committed to finishing it up once and for all.”

After his release, Sutherland spent six days at the U. S. military hospital in Wiesbaden, Germany, where doctors treated him for gastritis and an ulcer. Air Force spokesman Capt. Ray Cornelius said Sunday that Sutherland was in “very good condition.”

Sutherland, dean of agriculture at the American University in Beirut, was kidnaped on June 9, 1985. He said he spent much time in captivity with hostage Terry Anderson, chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press, who was abducted March 16, 1985.

They were typically chained to the wall and fed pita bread, rice and cheese, Sutherland said. They conversed in French or English or with a few words of Arabic and received some news.

“I didn’t think they would ever kill us,” Sutherland said of his captors. “I felt, sooner or later, we would get out of there. Although after four years, five years, six years, you begin to have occasional doubts.”