Freed Peruvian Hostage Describes Surreal Scene

Although his ears were still ringing from the explosions and gunfire, Peruvian auto magnate Carlos Chiappori heard every word of the speech that the chief of the guerrilla squad gave the hostages after leftist rebels captured the Japanese ambassador’s residence here--and the attention of the world.

The gunmen were not murderers or terrorists, declared the guerrilla leader, a well-spoken man in his 40s. He insisted that he and his colleagues were politicians. And he said he intended to become president of Peru someday.

On that strange note--as recounted Friday by Chiappori, 72, the spry, jovial chairman of Nissan Co. in Peru--began the siege of the Japanese diplomatic compound. Less than a day after his release, Chiappori described an experience inside the barricaded mansion as a delirious mix of tension, surrealism and surprising amiability.

Despite the withering initial gunfight and the death threat hanging over the 380 hostages, their respectful captors from the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement apparently did not menace, rob or otherwise mistreat their VIP prisoners, he and others said.

Indeed, by the second day, the athletic-looking kidnappers had removed their scarves from their faces, let their automatic weapons hang by their sides and half-heartedly enforced the rules of what became an impromptu luxury jail, letting their prisoners mill around talking, Chiappori said.

“It was like a cocktail party without drinks, no?” he observed. “And the guerrillas would come up and say, ‘Everybody back to your rooms and don’t come out.’ But 10 minutes later, we would drift out again and start talking.”

Chiappori was one of four elderly, infirm hostages freed Thursday, 24 hours before Friday’s release of 38 hostages. Even as the hostages were posting signs in the windows of the ambassador’s residence seeking food, water and electricity, Chiappori received a reporter in his walled mansion in the posh Monterrico neighborhood, as he basked in an affectionate swarm of relatives, took celebratory telephone calls and greeted neighbors carrying cakes.

Through it all, Chiappori remained casually dignified and true to his down-to-earth roots: His father was an Italian immigrant baker. He had worked as an engineer in the Peruvian jungle, enduring disease and fatigue before making his fortune in the Japanese car business.

On Friday, he looked surprisingly cheerful and fit despite two days in captivity and four major surgeries during the last year. “I don’t know how I got into this mess,” he said with a chuckle. “I’ll tell you this: I’m not going to any more parties.”

On Tuesday night, Chiappori and his wife made a brief stop at the gala at the Japanese ambassador’s residence to celebrate the birthday of Emperor Akihito. This was a de rigueur social event for an executive with 30 years of contacts and business dealings in Peru’s influential Japanese community.

But as he and his wife headed for the door, the astonishing occurred: The well-armed, uniformed Tupac guerrillas burst in. And, as the rebels methodically seized control of hundreds of partying dignitaries, they fired a gun inches from Chiappori’s head.

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The initial reaction of many guests--diplomats, politicians and executives with reflexes honed by years of terrorist warfare here in Peru--was to dump their credit cards and identification cards down toilets so they could not be identified.

After fighting off a regiment of police in the street outside, however, the guerrillas apparently found a guest list and went among their captives calling out their names. They were segregated: Chiappori and other Peruvians were kept on the first floor; most of the influential government officials and diplomats were herded to the second floor. The guerrillas instructed each room full of captives to designate a “coordinator.”

The hierarchy of the Tupac attack squad--about 23 men and two women--was clear: There was the chief and a deputy, another well-educated man who “was shorter and [was] the one who talked the most to the hostages.” The rest of the raiders were “foot soldiers” who talked less. They were muscular, as if they had trained hard for the mission. They looked and sounded like poor Peruvians from the jungles, the mountains and the urban slums, Chiappori said.

The 40 prisoners in his room slept on the floor in uncomfortable conditions. He said he did not know if the guerrillas were as easy-going in handling the captives upstairs--the Peruvian Cabinet ministers, Supreme Court judges and police commanders who have waged a bloody war on terrorism here.

But considering that the guerrillas had just pulled off one of the biggest terrorist operations in Peru’s recent history, the relaxed mood downstairs had comic aspects, Chiappori noted. The guerrillas, for example, did not confiscate their prisoners’ cellular telephones, so the well-heeled hostages made repeated surreptitious calls to their families.

Chiappori said he called his wife, who had been freed along with the other women--including President Alberto Fujimori’s mother and sister--early in the siege.

“She was crying,” he said of his wife. “I was fine and she was crying.”

He noted that the phone calls continued, even after the hostages were caught in the act. “The chief said he had overheard one of the conversations of somebody who said something bad about the guerrillas,” Chiappori recalled. “He asked us please to cut it out. . . . Then he said ‘Please just talk about personal topics and nothing else.’ ”

The chief did not name himself, though he has identified himself in communiques as Commander Huertas. He did go among the rooms expounding on his political philosophy. Although he mentioned the guerrillas’ much-publicized demand that the government free scores of his jailed comrades, his objective seemed more explicitly political.

As he made a point of reminding his hostages, Tupac rejects the apocalyptic violence of Peru’s larger, more vicious Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path, radicals. Instead, Tupac resembles--and works with--leftist movements such as Colombia’s M-19 group, whose former members have entered that country’s legitimate political system and have been elected to Congress and mayor’s offices.

The raiders of the Japanese ambassador’s residence appear to have similar aspirations.

“They said they defend the poor,” Chiappori said. “They give the impression that they want to run the country.”

Asked about the possibility of a resolution, Chiappori said he believes that the guerrillas are intent on negotiating and that the correct strategy to resolve the crisis is with talk, not force.

Chiappori himself is a man accustomed to saying what he thinks. And that may have won him his own freedom. He recalled that he took aside the rebel chief on Thursday with a casual, familiar, “Listen a minute, son . . . .” He suggested that, if the guerrilla leader really wanted to launch a political career, he should release some elderly hostages as a public relations move.

In response, the chief laughed and asked Chiappori his name. Hours later, as the devoutly Catholic Chiappori was reading a prayer that his wife had left him on a laminated card, the guerrillas called his name: A friend in the room had urged them to release the auto executive because he is still recovering from lung cancer operations.

The gunmen complied, turning Chiappori and three others over to Red Cross emissaries.

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In one of the poignant moments of the standoff, Chiappori and the three other elderly hostages who were released Thursday emerged into the street outside the Japanese ambassador’s residence, ringed by police sharpshooters and mobs of reporters and camera crews from all over the world. As the quartet trudged toward freedom, a female Red Cross doctor urged Chiappori to lean on her shoulder if he was tired.

But the indomitable executive was not too exhausted to joke in reply: “I better not. My wife might be watching, and I don’t want to get in trouble.”