Return of Hostage’s Body Expected

U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar said Friday that he expects the body of one of two Americans who died in captivity in Lebanon to be released soon.

“We were expecting the return of a body any time; I wouldn’t be surprised if they are going to get it to us today or tomorrow,” said Perez de Cuellar.

The two missing men are William R. Higgins, a U.S. Marine lieutenant colonel, and William Buckley, an embassy political officer and the former CIA station chief in Beirut.

“I think we have been working, of course, mainly on Higgins because Higgins was a United Nations peacekeeping officer,” Perez de Cuellar said. “And then Buckley, the other one, and of course the bodies of others.”

Other Westerners who may have died in captivity include Briton Alec Collett, a consultant to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, and Alberto Molinari, an Italian businessman.

Higgins was serving with U.N. observers in Lebanon when he was kidnaped Feb. 17, 1988. His captors released a videotape on July 31, 1989, showing his body hanging from a makeshift gallows.

Buckley’s captors said on Oct. 4, 1985, that they had executed him in retaliation for an Israeli air raid on the Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters in Tunisia. But former hostage David P. Jacobsen has said Buckley died of illness four months earlier.