Three Years in the Belly of Beirut

By William Dowell/Paris

"They weren't human or inhuman. They were nonhuman." That was how French Journalist Jean-Paul Kauffmann, quoting fellow hostage Michel Seurat, , described the pro-Iranian Islamic Jihad terrorists who held him hostage for three years. The wrenching account of his kidnaping, captivity and release appeared last week in L'Evenement du Jeudi, the French newsmagazine Kauffmann worked for when he and French Researcher Seurat were abducted in May 1985.

The two men became hostages by chance after missing a Beirut airport bus and deciding to take a taxi. When a Mercedes pulled alongside and ordered them to stop, they expected a robbery. Instead they were forced into the back of the gunmen's car. What followed was three years of intimidation and psychological torture.

For more than a year, the hostages never saw daylight. Their only diversion was reading the handful of books provided by their jailers; Kauffmann read War and Peace more than 20 times. At one point, he and Seurat listened while their Shi'ite captors spent eight days torturing an Arab suspected of being a spy. When it was over, Kauffmann's jailer joked, "I damaged him a little. He had two broken ribs. We broke both his legs. Finally he talked, and we set him free." Freedom, Kauffmann learned, was a euphemism for death.

In one of the most bizarre episodes, Seurat was allowed a brief visit in August 1985 with his wife and daughters in Beirut, and then returned to the cell loaded down with sociology books. It was the last time he saw his family. A month later, he was deathly ill with hepatitis. A Lebanese Jewish doctor, Elie Hallat, who was also a hostage, pleaded in vain for Seurat's release. As his condition worsened, a Shi'ite commander volunteered a transfusion. "You are becoming a Shi'ite," joked a captor after Seurat was given blood. In fact, the researcher was dying. By then French Hostages Marcel Carton and Marcel Fontaine had been added to the group. "So I am going to die," Seurat told his friends.

In March 1986, the Islamic Jihad announced that it had "executed" Seurat. It seems likely, however, that he succumbed, at 39, to his disease. But the jailers told the hostages he was alive and recovering in a hospital. Kauffmann later learned from a radio newscast that Hallat, doomed by his captors' rabid anti-Semitism, had been executed. Kauffmann, Carton and Fontaine were continually moved from apartment to apartment. At one point Kauffmann was wrapped in bandages like a mummy, sealed in a metal box and bolted under the chassis of a truck. When he banged on the side, he was told he would be shot. "Kill me," he snapped back. "It doesn't make any difference."

At another point Kauffmann and Fontaine were tied together and placed in a coffin. When they were let out for a moment, Fontaine peered under his blindfold and saw that they were near a cement factory. "They're going to kill us here, put our bodies in cement and dump us in the sea," said Fontaine. Later Kauffmann and Fontaine were put in a new cell and chained like animals to a spike in the floor.

When Kauffmann, after dozens of false hopes, was finally about to be released, a guard approached and told him it was all over. "What does that mean?" he asked. "Liberty," said the guard. Given the double meaning of that word, Kauffmann's greatest fears and hopes ricocheted through his emotions until the last second of captivity. Driven to an empty field, Kauffmann was joined there by Carton and Fontaine. Arriving a few minutes later at a hotel in Beirut, Kauffmann heard a French voice shout, "French intelligence services! Clear the way, for God's sake!" The ordeal was finally over.