Hostage Steen Freed by Lebanon Kidnapers

Grinning broadly and giddy with excitement, Alann Steen, journalism professor and longtime hostage, was freed by his kidnapers in Lebanon on Tuesday, then met the press and delivered a twist on his lessons.

“It’s always been said in journalism classes that a journalist covers the news but never makes it,” he said in a press conference in Damascus, Syria. “I’m happy to make it today.”

Coming on a rainy day 24 hours after the release of hostage Joseph J. Cicippio, 61, freedom for Steen, 52, left one American still in the hands of Shiite Muslim militants in Lebanon, but Terry A. Anderson, the chief Middle East correspondent of the Associated Press, reportedly was released today.

“It’s great to be out,” said Steen, the Boston-born educator who was abducted with three other men from the campus of Beirut University College on Jan. 24, 1987. “I don’t think I can find words right now to express all that I feel--except it’s wonderful. Five years is no fun.”

Steen was turned over to Syrian authorities and U.S. Ambassador Christopher Ross in Damascus. He appeared thin, his face hacked and splotched by what he said was his first shave in three years. His hair was still straggly, but his spirit was sparkling and he appeared fit.

“I exercised every day for two hours to keep my mind off what was happening to me,” Steen explained. As he left the Foreign Ministry press conference, he told reporters his health is excellent but added: “I have had a lot of colds.”

Released hostages have said Steen was seriously ill in 1987, but he made no mention of that Tuesday. Instead he was determinedly upbeat. As he left the press conference with Arab and Western reporters, Steen called out, “Are any of my students here?” When several Arab journalists responded, he shot a fist into the air and shouted “All right!”

After a 5 1/2-hour flight from Damascus, Steen was met by U.S. Ambassador to Germany Robert Kimmitt at Frankfurt’s Rhein-Main Airport and driven in the ambassador’s bulletproof Cadillac to Wiesbaden Medical Center.

At the hospital entrance, Steen smiled broadly and waved as he was presented with flowers and showered with confetti by well-wishers. When he entered the hospital to the cheers of gathered patients and staff, Steen looked up and smiled at a welcoming banner that summed up the hopes of many Americans: “Dear Santa, Please bring us one more.” The words referred to Anderson, the last remaining American hostage.

Dressed in an olive green parka to protect him from the subfreezing air, Steen looked in better condition than Cicippio and told reporters he is “very well. A lot better than yesterday,” he added before he was guided by military officials into the hospital.

Steen’s arrival marked the first time since 1986 that the Wiesbaden center has housed more than one former hostage. The hospital has been a traditional first stop outside the Muslim world for Americans held captive there, receiving members of the U.S. Embassy staff from Tehran in 1981 and passengers held prisoner aboard hijacked U.S. planes in the Middle East in 1985 and 1986.

During his captivity, Steen initially had been held with the three other Beirut University College professors abducted with him by gunmen posing in uniform as school security guards: Jesse Turner, freed earlier this fall; Robert Polhill, released last year; and Mitheleshwar Singh, an Indian-born American turned loose in 1988. Responsibility for the kidnapings was claimed by a group called Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine.

A graduate of Humboldt State University in Arcata, Calif., Steen taught journalism there, at Cal State Chico and College of the Redwoods in Eureka before taking the job in Beirut in 1983. There he met and married his wife, Virginia Rose, who was a fine-arts teacher at the school.

Virginia Steen was to fly from the United States to join her husband in Wiesbaden. Asked at the Damascus press conference whether he had any words for his wife, he replied: “I love her. I miss her.”

Earlier, Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Yousef Shakkour said his government had worked for the string of releases--Steen was the fifth American hostage freed since August--”motivated by humanitarian considerations” in concert with Iran and U.N. officials. He said Syria is grateful for the developments, but “our gratification can only be fulfilled” when all the Western hostages, as well as Arab captives held by Israel, are freed.

The rapid cadence of freedom for the Western hostages--Anderson, two German aid workers and an Italian are the last believed held by the pro-Iranian kidnap groups--appeared to to be taking place independently of case-by-case Israeli responses.

The Jerusalem government’s proxy militia in southern Lebanon freed 25 Arab prisoners on Sunday. Perez de Cuellar’s envoy dealing with hostages, Giandomenico Picco, indicated over the weekend that the releases have been part of a delicate deal that includes all parties.

On Tuesday, Hossein Moussavian, the Iranian ambassador in Bonn, told German radio that Tehran wants the kidnapers of the Germans to free them immediately and unconditionally.

He identified the kidnapers as a Lebanese family, the Hamadi clan, two of whose members are serving sentences in German prisons. Mohammed Ali Hamadi was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of an American sailor during the hijacking of a TWA jetliner in 1985. The German hostages are relief workers Heinrich Struebig and Thomas Kemptner, taken hostage outside the Lebanese port of Sidon in May, 1989.

Times staff writer Daniel Williams in Jerusalem contributed to this report.