Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 3, 1991 TAG: 9103030044
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: BAGHDAD, IRAQ LENGTH: Medium
The four men, haggard and unshaven but displaying no overt signs of mistreatment, were delivered before dawn by Iraqi authorities to the hotel room of a CBS official in Baghdad.
In statements recorded by CBS, the four men - Simon, 49; producer Peter Bluff, 47; cameraman Roberto Alvarez, 37; and soundman Juan Caldera, 29 - thanked God, their colleagues and the officials of various countries who worked for their release, and apologized for causing suffering to their families.
Speaking haltingly, Simon said: "I don't have a sense of how to say it or where to begin, so for now, all I'll say is it hasn't been easy. It's been a long and a difficult 40 days and 40 nights, but the point is we've lost a little weight, we've aged a little . . . but we're fine.
"This is a story that could have ended another way, but it had a happy ending."
Neither Simon nor the others gave any details of their time in captivity before leaving Saturday afternoon for Amman, Jordan.
The four journalists are the first Americans to be freed by the Iraqis since the cease-fire announced by President Bush Wednesday.
The Iraqi government said the four had been released "in response to a request by the Soviet Union and by Mr. Y. Primakov personally." Yevgeny Primakov was Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's personal envoy to Iraq during the Soviet Union's effort to avert a ground war with the American-led coalition.
The four men were arrested Jan. 21 during a reporting trip they had made in defiance of the U.S. and Saudi military ban on journalists traveling unescorted in the battle zone.
Saudi military authorities found their vehicle, which contained about $6,000 in cash, television equipment and Caldera's passport.
CBS has said the men were taken prisoner along the Saudi-Kuwait border. But Iraq said in its statement that the crew "had entered into Iraq illegally from Saudi Arabia and through the Hafr al-Batin area of the border."
CBS Vice President Don DeCesare, who had been in Baghdad working for the crew's release, issued a statement thanking Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz for having "personally intervened to speed the process" of release. He also thanked the governments of the Soviet Union, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, as well as the Vatican and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat.
DeCesare added that the journalists "were interrogated closely about their reasons for being in the area where they were taken. They endured the lives of prisoners. Throughout, they maintained their innocence, stating and restating that they were journalists who had gone to the border for the sole purpose of telling a story."
Iraqi officials said on Feb. 15 that the military was holding the four men and that Saddam would decide whether they were innocent, spies or prisoners of war. More than 4,000 journalists signed petitions requesting the crew's release.
The men appeared at the Rasheed Hotel at 4:17 a.m. and were delivered to DeCesare's room. All wore striped prisoners' smocks.
Simon, in an apparent reference to prisoners of war the crew encountered in captivity, said: "It is my fervent hope and my prayer that the people we met along the way - Americans, British, Kuwaitis primarily - will be following in our footsteps in a matter of days."
by CNB