Two young French sisters, held hostage by a Palestinian terrorist group in Lebanon for the last 13 months, were freed Thursday in Tripoli, Libya, reportedly at the intervention of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
Marie-Laure Valente, 7, and Virginie Valente, 6, were delivered safely to a special envoy from France, Leon Bouvier. He was reportedly accompanied by their father.
The children’s mother, Jacqueline Valente, and five Belgian hostages remained in captivity.
All were kidnapped at sea in November 1987, when terrorists seized their yacht, the Silco, in Mediterranean water off the Gaza Strip.
They were brought to Lebanon by Abu Nidal’s Fatah Revolutionary Council, a Palestinian extremist group, and accused of being spies for Israel.
None of the captives is Jewish. The Valentes are French, while the other hostages — Fernand Houtekins, his brother, Emmanuel, the brother’s wife, Godlieve, and their teen-age children, Laurent and Valerie — are Belgian.
The terrorists held a news conference in Beirut on Sunday, where they presented a video-cassette by the Houtekins family warning Belgium “not to listen to the Zionists.”
The family appeared to be under duress.
The Valente children were freed after a week of false announcements by their captors that they had been released.
Some observers believe this was intentionally done to steal the international media spotlight from Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasir Arafat’s peace offensive.
Others said Abu Nidal wanted to use the children to bargain for the release of a Palestinian terrorist jailed in Belgium for the 1979 attack on young Jewish summer campers in Antwerp.
There is also speculation over Gadhafi’s mediation.
According to a television report here, the Libyan leader is trying to gain diplomatic support in Europe in his latest fracas with the Reagan administration over reports that Libya is manufacturing chemical weapons.
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