
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 4, 1991                   TAG: 9103040242
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: LONDON                                LENGTH: Short

U.S. BOMBS FRIGHTENED TV CREW HELD CAPTIVE

Four members of a CBS television crew were blindfolded and beaten while in Iraqi custody, but one said in an interview Sunday he was even more terrified by allied bombs that hit a building where they were held.

Reporter Bob Simon, CBS London bureau chief Peter Bluff, free-lance cameraman Roberto Alvarez and soundman Juan Caldera were reported in good condition at a hospital in London on Sunday.

The four were captured by Iraqi forces near the Kuwait-Saudi border on Jan. 21. Iraq released them in Baghdad on Saturday after prodding from Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

The four have lost weight because of malnutrition, but otherwise were "in remarkably good shape when you consider they've been in prison in awful circumstances for 40 days," said Dr. Stuart Sanders, who examined the crew at Humana Hospital in Wellington.

Tom Goodman, a spokesman for CBS News, said the crew members do not have any internal injuries, broken bones or bruises.

In the interview broadcast Sunday night on CBS' "60 Minutes," Simon said all four men were beaten at the same time.

"We were blindfolded, which made it all the more frightening," he said. "They beat us with canes, with sticks, on the legs, on the head."

- Associated Press

by CNB