Was Caged for 20 Months, Released U.S. Hostage Says : Philippines: Arvey Drown says his captors seized him ‘by accident’ and never told him why he was being held.

Appearing healthy and in good spirits, freed American hostage Arvey Duane Drown said Thursday that Communist insurgents kept him shackled in a jungle cage for most of the last 20 months but never told him why he was being held.

Drown, a 64-year-old Colorado gold hunter and entrepreneur, told reporters here that he still doesn’t know why he was seized at a roadblock by Communist New People’s Army rebels on Oct. 17, 1990, or why he was finally released to local priests three days ago.

“Beats the heck out of me,” he said with a shrug at a press conference at the U.S. Embassy. “Today, after all this time, I have no idea why they kept me.”

Wearing dark pants and a neat white shirt, Drown said he feared for his life “at all points” during the ordeal. “I usually sat in the corner and prayed,” he said quietly, biting his lip, “because a lot of the time I was shackled.”

Drown said he was “picked up by accident” after he blundered into an NPA checkpoint during a combat operation in northern Luzon and saw them burn a farmer’s house and destroy three other houses and a tractor. “I just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said. “I was just an American in the group of cars that they stopped.”

Drown, who has trimmed the long, gray bushy beard he grew in captivity, said he was fed three times a day and was not maltreated. But he grew visibly angry when he was asked his opinion of the guerrillas who held him so long.

“My estimate of the NPA is that they are nothing more than a criminal organization,” he said.

He said his captors averaged 20 years of age, usually had a second-grade education and were “recruited from the prisons and the barrios and streets of Manila.” He said he never met the group’s leader.

Drown said the NPA accused him of aiding the Philippine military counterinsurgency effort. But he said his only military service was as an Army corporal during the Korean War. Although he refused to provide any details, he said he was visiting the Philippines seeking investment opportunities for clients whom he would not identify.