Guerrillas Raise Their Price

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AMMAN, Jordan, Sept. 15 — Arab guerrillas, at a news conference today, denounced the Red Cross, rejected international law and raised their asking price for the release of the airline passengers and crew members they are holding.

Two spokesmen for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine set out its increased demands in what seemed to be an attempt to generate pressure on the five Governments concerned, to make separate deals to free their nationals.

“We can’t wait forever,” one spokesman for the Marxist guerrilla group told the reporters packed into the front’s information center here. But no deadline was set for arrangements to free the 54 hostages, some of whom have been held since the front hijacked three airliners a week ago Sunday. A fourth was seized last Wednesday.

Reports from Israel put the number of hostages at 55. Today the front added two demands: the release of “10 Lebanese soldiers taken as prisoners” by Israel earlier this year and the release of the “Swiss comrade taken as a prisoner in Haifa” this summer on suspicion of pro-commando activities.

Elaborating on past declarations, the spokesmen read a statement that called on Israel to “announce in principle her acceptance” of the new demands and others made earlier. The guerrillas have called on the Israelis to release some of their comrades seized in the past as well as Arabs detained Sunday.

They also want to conclude separate deals with Britain, West Germany and Switzerland under which nationals of those countries held hostage would be exchanged for imprisoned guerrillas, seven in all.

After the new demands are met, the statement said, the Popular Front will submit a list of other prisoners held by the Israelis whose release it wants in exchange for freeing hostages who are “Israelis and bearers of American-Israeli dual citizenship.”

The American hostages would also presumably be freed at that point since the Popular Front has said that it will treat and release them “on the same basis as Israelis.”

One of the spokesmen read an English translation of the statement, which also accused the International Committee of the Red Cross of having “tried to gain time for the benefit of the imperialist countries” in its negotiations here last week. Red Cross Declines to Reply Red Cross officials declined to comment on the allegations.

The statement also said that “we consider that the international law put by the imperialists does not commit us because it was the same law under which our people was forced out of the homeland.” Asserting the Popular Front’s independence of outside influences, the statement said: “Our law is the victory of the revolution.”

It warned against “stupid intervention to free the hostages” and said they were being looked after by a medical team. It also indicated that they would be denied foreign visitors or outside medical help.

The hostages are said to include eight Britons from a British Overseas Airways Corporation VC-10 hijacked en route from Bahrain to Beruit and eight persons — Swiss, Germans and an American — from a Swissair DC-8 seized between Zurich and New York.

There are also 38 passengers and crewmen from a Trans World Airlines Boeing 707 that was hijacked while en route between Frankfurt and New York after a stop in Israel. Western informants said there was a diabetic among the 38 who needed regular medical attention.

They said that one passenger, Rabbi Hunter, 70 years old, of 670 Rockaway Parkway, Brooklyn, was understood to have been particularly uncomfortable. The Americans include non-Jews, among them four T.W.A. crew members and an airline pilot who was a passenger. Another non-Jew who happened to be on board is John Hollingsworth, an American diplomat stationed in Algiers.

As far as is known he has no Israeli visa. Captain Termed Uncooperative The guerrillas seem to be holding such men merely because they are able-bodied Americans. The hostages also include five women, four of them girls apparently considered to be of military age since Israel uses women soldiers.

The informants said the Americans had been dispersed to three locations, one of which was a quarter of an hour or so from the Hotel Intercontinental in Amman. The captain of the jet was understood to be pressing for better treatment of his passengers and crew. He is said to have been characterized by the guerrillas as “not cooperative.”

Their statement said that the front would treat the hostages “in the same way their Governments treat our prisoners.”

The second speaker, an editor named Ghassan Kanafani, said the hostages would be given the same food and accomodations as the guerrillas themselves, saying, “Our commandos are treated humanely, but we can’t afford the standard of the European kind of living.”

Some Westerners who have been involved in negotiations on freeing the hostages said the news conference had cleared the air by presenting the demands in a systematic way. Despite the demands, the British, West German and Swiss Governments adhere to the American position that a settlement must provide for the release of all the hostages.

According to those involved in the contacts, the prospects for an over-all arrangement depend heavily on the guerrillas’ list of prisoners held by Israel whom they want freed. “The Israelis must value some of their prisoners a lot higher than others,” an informant observed.

The guerrillas’ spokesmen indicated that their organization would consult with other groups before presenting its eventual list, which other guerrilla sources have said would contain “much fewer than a thousand names.” The list would be in addition to those whose release has already been demanded. They include Leila Khaled, a hijacker held in Britain.

The front says it will release the eight hostage Britons if she is freed with the body of a man who was killed during the unsuccessful hijacking of an El Al jetliner. The front has also demanded the release of three held in Switzerland and three held in West Germany.

The freeing of two Algerian officials seized by Israel this summer when their plane stopped at an Israeli airport has also been demanded. No explanation was made for the new demands, but the news conference seemed to usher in a new phase in the effort to exploit the hostages.

Despite the criticism of the Red Cross, the spokesmen indicated that they would not rule it out as a mediator. They indicated they felt it had shown bad faith in getting them to lift deadlines they had originally set.

The statement said the front had blown up a Pan American World Airways jumbojet in Cairo and the three airliners in Jordan “because of the maneuvers exercised by Switzerland, West Germany, England and the United States.” It added, “The destruction was to prove to all these powers that any more challenges will only incur losses on their part.”

The front also said it was “completely responsible for the hostages” and would “forbid any unnecessary contacts with the hostages the same way our prisoners are treated.”

After the news conference reporters were taken to a Popular Front hospital to see Ahmed Hudhud, a young blind man who said through an interpreter that he had been tortured by the Israelis. He said that all his teeth had been pulled and that he had lost his sight because of inadequate and incorrect treatment for an eye ailment.

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"Guerrillas Raise Their Price," The New York Times, 16 September 1970. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1970-025. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1970-025