2nd Hostage Freed : Educator Turned Over in Beirut and Flown to Damascus : Reed Had Been Held a Captive for 3 1/2 Years

DAMASCUS, Syria —  American hostage Frank H. Reed was released today after being held more than 3 1/2 years by pro-Iranian Shiite Muslim kidnapers in Lebanon. He was the second American freed in nine days.

Syrian officials said the 57-year-old educator from Malden, Mass., was handed over to Syrian troops in Beirut at 8:30 p.m. (10:30 a.m. PDT) and then driven to Damascus.

“Frank Reed has arrived in Damascus and is now in the hands of the Syrian government,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman said. “He will be handed over to the U.S. ambassador at the Foreign Ministry shortly.”

In an interview broadcast on CNN after his release, Reed, bearded and looking pale, said of his captivity, “It was lonely, it was boring. I was fed regularly and had plenty of warm clothes. . . . Of course I am very happy to be free and I hope that all of my fellow hostages will be free soon.”

Steve Strain, a spokesman for the State Department’s anti-terrorism bureau, said a plane is ready to take Reed to West Germany, where a U.S. hostage reception team is waiting.

The news came hours after Iranian and Syrian officials had predicted that Reed would be released, and just over a week after pro-Iranian Muslim extremists in Beirut released another American hostage, former accounting professor Robert Polhill.

U.S. officials had no ready explanation for the sudden freeing of two American hostages, but there were indications that both Syria and Iran had put the pressure on the Islamic radicals to release them. Both countries have been seeking to improve relations with the United States.

White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said “no deal” was made to win Reed’s freedom. He also reiterated U.S. policy that it will not negotiate on the hostages.

Reed’s release leaves six Americans and 10 other Westerners still held hostage in Lebanon.

In Malden, Mass., Reed’s wife pleaded today for the release of all hostages, saying her husband’s freedom is not enough.

“This was the hardest time in my life, very hard,” said Fifi Reed, 39, Reed’s Syrian-born wife. “But it’s not the end of the road; other hostages are still there, and we still hope and pray for them. It’s not enough to have Robert (Polhill) out and Frank out, we want everybody out.”

Reed’s family had been alerted to his possible release late Sunday.

When she received notification of his freedom today, Fifi Reed gave a victory sign to family members and said joyfully: “He’s officially free.”

The family group included Reed’s 91-year-old mother, Leota Reed Sprague; his brother, and his two daughters by his first marriage, Marilyn Langston, 33, and Jacqueline Reed, 28.

Fifi Reed and their son Tarek, 9, were to leave for Wiesbaden, West Germany, this afternoon on a commercial flight to join Reed.

A previously unknown group called the Islamic Dawn Organization on Sunday issued a photograph of Reed and said it would free him with a message for President Bush.

Reed, an educator who moved to Lebanon in 1977 and converted to Islam, was snatched by unidentified gunmen in West Beirut on Sept. 9, 1986, while he was on his way to a golf course.

He was an educational adviser to the Lebanese International School in the Muslim sector of the Lebanese capital at the time he was abducted.