Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 2, 1990 TAG: 9005020642
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/2 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WIESBADEN, WEST GERMANY LENGTH: Medium
Reed was released to the Syrians in Lebanon on Monday after 3 1/2 years in the hands of Shiite Moslem fundamentalist kidnappers. He is at the U.S. Air Force Hospital in Wiesbaden for medical tests and debriefings.
Fahima Reed told a news conference that her husband was angry the hostage crisis has not been resolved.
Asked specifically if Reed was upset with officials in Washington, she said: "He's angry at everybody for the length of time he and others were kept, and that others are still there, too."
While the 57-year-old educator underwent medical tests, Reed disclosed details of her husband's imprisonment. She said he was blindfolded and bound for almost his entire captivity, except for 90 minutes during the evenings.
Fahima Reed, 39 and a Syrian Moslem, was asked how many Western hostages there were in the room at one time.
"Sometimes, five or six, sometimes two, sometimes he was alone," she said. "They weren't allowed to communicate."
"He did see Terry Anderson," she said, referring to the longest-held Western hostage in Lebanon. Anderson, chief Middle East correspondent of The Associated Press, was kidnapped on March 16, 1985.
"Our joy will not be complete until every single one of them is free," Reed told a news conference.
A special State Department team was to resume questioning Reed for a second day today. They seek clues about the 16 remaining Westerners held hostage in Lebanon, six of whom are American.
In telephone calls to his daughter, Marilyn Langston, and Anderson's sister, Peggy Say, Reed said he was held with Anderson and Thomas Sutherland until about a year ago and was surprised to find out they had not been freed. Sutherland, acting agriculture dean at American University of Beirut, was abducted on June 9, 1985.
Say said Reed told her "the last time he saw Terry was in January 1989. Terry was in reasonably good health, although he had been having physical problems. . . . He said Terry's attitude was still feisty, as far as the guards go, and he was always screaming for something to read."
Reed said her husband was "moved around a lot" and when other hostages were taken from the room permanently he thought they were being freed.
Asked if other hostages were in the same room as her husband the day he was freed, Reed replied: "I think two," but refused to say who they might have been.
She said Reed was allowed to watch television or read magazines or books for about 90 minutes during the evenings, but he refused. "These things were so trivial compared to the things that were snatched away," she said.
On Tuesday, Reed was flown from Damascus, Syria, to West Germany for the medical tests and debriefings and was reunited with Fahima, his second wife, and their 9-year-old son, Tarek.
He celebrated freedom with a steak and a beer and showed no initial signs of serious health problems, although doctors said he had lost "significant weight and muscle mass" during his 43 months in captivity and felt tired and weak.
A hospital statement said Reed would probably be at the hospital "for the next two to three days."
Reed, the founder of a private school in Beirut, was the second American hostage to be freed in nine days. Robert Polhill, freed April 22, went through the same battery of medical tests and debriefings last week.
The Wiesbaden hospital has become the ritual stop for freed American hostages on their way home. Hospital specialists are experts at comforting freed hostages and helping them with any post-captivity psychological shocks.
by CNB