Lebanese Says Hostages Are Kept on Move

BEIRUT —  Interior Minister Abdullah Rassi said today the kidnapers of American and French hostages have been moving their captives from one secret prison to another in Lebanon.

He also said in an hourlong interview with the Associated Press that Syrian President Hafez Assad’s government is determined to help free the hostages.

“When I took over, we had word where the hostages were. But now we don’t,” said Rassi, who became interior minister two weeks ago. “I am certain they (the kidnapers) are moving them from one place to another.”

Local informants have said the hostages were held in east Lebanon’s ancient city of Baalbek, in Beirut’s old Jewish quarter of Wadi Abu-Jamil and in various Shia Muslim outskirts of the capital.

Sixteen foreigners are missing in Lebanon, including four Americans and seven Frenchmen. A Shia extremist group, Islamic Jihad, has claimed it killed one of the Americans and one Frenchman, but no bodies have been found.

Two Britons, an Irishman, an Italian and a South Korean also are missing.

Rassi, 55, is a Christian who maintains close ties with Syria, the main power broker in Lebanon.

On July 26, Islamic Jihad freed Father Lawrence Martin Jenco, 51, a Roman Catholic priest from Joliet, Ill., who was abducted Jan. 8, 1985. The kidnapers said in a statement that he was being freed as a final “good-will gesture,” and threatened to kill the remaining American captives unless their demands were met.

Islamic Jihad has demanded that Kuwait release 17 men jailed in connection with the 1983 bombings of the U.S. and French embassies there. Kuwait refuses.