Cicippio Freed After 5 Years, Appears Frail

Looking frail and unsteady, Joseph J. Cicippio--the American hostage who more than once thought death would come to him during his five years of captivity in Beirut--was freed Monday and arrived at a U.S. military hospital here later in the day for medical treatment.

The 61-year-old university administrator smiled and waved as he acknowledged the applause from service personnel who gathered amid an array of American flags on a balcony overlooking the main entrance to the U.S. Air Force Medical Center.

Cicippio took a bouquet of flowers from a well-wisher, stumbled as he ascended the hospital steps, then turned to answer a reporter who asked how he felt. “Terrific, tonight,” he said, smiling. “Great.”

Then the man who was raised in a devoutly Roman Catholic home but later converted to Islam walked by an artificial Christmas tree and disappeared into the seclusion of the hospital.

After a 5 1/2-hour flight from Damascus, Cicippio was met at Frankfurt’s Rhein-Main Air Base by Robert Kimmit, U.S. ambassador to Germany, and James Ward, deputy assistant secretary of state for consular affairs. His Lebanese-born wife, Ilham, and his mother-in-law, Malake Najib Ghandour, accompanied him from Damascus.

Two Americans--journalist Terry A. Anderson and educator Alann Steen--and two Germans and an Italian remain in the hands of kidnapers. Steen may be freed within the next 48 hours, according to reports late Monday.

Just how long Cicippio might stay in Wiesbaden remained unclear. U.S. officials left open the possibility of his immediate transfer to the United States.

Military spokesman John Woodhouse said the State Department on Monday had asked Cicippio’s brother, Thomas, and two sons--who were planning to fly to Germany for a reunion today--to delay their trip for at least 24 hours because of the prospect that he might be flown directly to the United States.

“They learned (earlier Monday) in Damascus, Syria, that he has had surgery in the last two months,” Woodhouse said. “If his condition warrants, he could go back right away, and they want to avoid the danger of bypassing each other over the Atlantic.”

In the past, newly released American hostages have remained in Wiesbaden two or three days for tests and medical treatment before returning home. But last month, educator Thomas M. Sutherland, another longtime hostage, delayed his return to the United States for several days after tests showed he suffers from a peptic ulcer.

Shortly after he was freed, and while still in the Middle East, Cicippio called Monday “the first free day of the rest of my life.”

“I’m happy it’s over. I’d like to put it all behind me,” the onetime comptroller for the American University of Beirut said of his more than five years as a hostage, which included a dramatic revocation of a death sentence by his captors two years ago.

He was the fourth U.S. captive freed since August--and walking evidence that the cruel ordeal of the hostages is coming to an end.

The German government was less optimistic about the fate of its hostages. The Germans did receive fresh photographs of the hostages, which officials said offered the first cause for any optimism in months.

As for Cicippio, he told a press conference at the Syrian Foreign Ministry in Damascus that his captors--who style themselves the Revolutionary Justice Organization--said of the remaining hostages that they “hope they would all be released by the end of this year.” The kidnapers believe, their former hostage told reporters, that “everything has more or less been resolved now, that the problems are over.”

Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh, asked minutes earlier whether more captives would be freed soon, said: “We hope within a week there will be others.”

Expectations for Cicippio’s release rose Sunday when the Israeli-backed militia in southern Lebanon freed 25 Arabs held in Khiam Prison there. Later that day in Damascus, the United Nations released a statement declaring that “important progress has been made on the road to a solution of the Western hostages in Lebanon.”

The statement was issued by Giandomenico Picco, U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar’s suave personal envoy who since last August has traveled repeatedly between Iran, Lebanon and Syria trying to persuade all parties in the hostage crisis that a solution was possible.

Cicippio was turned over to Syrian authorities in Beirut at midday and arrived in Damascus by car several hours later. A short man with bushy, jumping eyebrows and a rubbery grin, he made a brief statement to reporters and took only two questions.

He said the only other hostages he had seen were Edward A. Tracy, “who was with me for five years,” and Frenchman Jean-Louis Normandin, who was freed in 1987 and brought Cicippio’s family in Pennsylvania the first confirmation that the university official was alive. Tracy was freed in August.

“I don’t know what to say really, I’m a little tense right now,” Cicippio said. “I think that five years without any newspapers, television, magazines and what have you. . . . I don’t know what really has been out there. . . . I have to learn everything all over again.”

He said he had been moved “about 20 times” during his captivity.

He credited his kidnapers with rushing him to a hospital for an operation within the past two months. While declining to disclose the nature of his surgery, he said: “I’m happy about that, or I may not have been here today.”

Whatever the problem, it was not the first time Cicippio had felt danger since he was kidnaped from the campus on Sept. 12, 1986, which made him the third longest-held American hostage after Anderson, chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press, and educator Sutherland.

In the summer of 1989, the Revolutionary Justice Organization announced that Cicippio would be executed if the Israelis did not release Sheik Abdel Karim Obeid, a militant Shiite Muslim cleric abducted by Israeli commandos three days earlier. A communique from the militant group said the hostage would be executed and a video of the killing would be released, shocking a Western public that had just seen a tape of the hanged body of Marine Lt. Col. William R. Higgins, another American hostage.

That tape was turned over to news agencies by a different kidnap group in the campaign to force the release of Obeid, who remains in Israeli hands.

Five hours before Cicippio was to be executed, his wife pleaded for his life in a televised appeal. The kidnapers declared a 48-hour postponement as crisis meetings were held in Washington and U.S. warships left Mediterranean ports.

As the second deadline for Obeid’s release approached, the kidnapers balked again but released a videotape of Cicippio meant to increase the pressure. He called for help to free the pro-Iranian cleric, adding: “Don’t be late, because they are very serious to hang us.”

Then, in a wrenching personal address to Ilham Cicippio, he said: “Goodby, my wife. If you don’t hear my voice and see my face again, I want you to look after yourself, and don’t be sad and always remember me.”

Within an hour, the kidnapers said their execution order was “frozen.” Then, less than a month later, the Revolutionary Justice Organization again threatened to kill Cicippio if French naval forces did not withdraw from Lebanese waters in what the kidnapers interpreted as a show of force to support renegade army leader Michel Aoun.

On Monday in Jerusalem, Israeli officials expressed unusual optimism about recovering four soldiers who are missing in Lebanon: three tank crewman who are believed to be dead and a jet navigator who is presumed to be alive and in captivity.

“We have been told by the United Nations that there is an arrangement in the making,” said Uri Lubrani, Israel’s chief hostage negotiator. “We haven’t gone into all the details, but there is an arrangement. And the noise we get from the other parties, Beirut and elsewhere, are very positive in this sense.”

While cautioning that “nothing is definite when it comes to Lebanon,” Lubrani added that “I have reason to believe that we are on the right track.”

He indicated that Obeid would be part of any deal, as long as information on the Israelis was forthcoming.

Joseph Cicippio

Kidnapped Sept. 12, 1986

Released Dec. 2, 1991

* Age 61

* From Norristown, Pa.

* Abducted while working as comptroller at the American University of Beirut

* Held by a group calling itself the Revolutionary Justice Organization

* In 1989, his captors threatened to kill him unless Israel freed Sheik Abdel Karim Obeid, a Shiite leader

* Eldest son, a sister, and a brother-in-law have died during his captivity

* Another sister has cancer

* Has never seen four grandchildren born since being taken prisoner

Williams reported from Damascus and Marshall from Wiesbaden. Times staff writer Daniel Williams in Jerusalem contributed to this report.