Ailing U.S. Hostage Will Be Freed Soon, Magazine Says

BEIRUT — A seriously ill American hostage in Lebanon is expected to be freed soon because the demands for his release have been met, the magazine that unveiled the U.S.-Iran arms deal reported Friday.

Ash Shiraa did not name the hostage, but Beirut newspapers and diplomatic sources speculated it might be Alann Steen, who was reported near death earlier this year.

Steen, 48, a professor of communications at the Beirut University College, was abducted Jan. 24, 1987. The previously unknown Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility.

‘Demands Were Met’

Negotiations with the captors of the sick hostage “reached (their) final stage in which all demands of the kidnapers were met,” said Ash Shiraa, the pro-Syrian magazine that first reported the Reagan Administration’s arms-for-hostages deal with Iran last year, without elaborating.

State Department spokesman Don Hamilton said he could not confirm the Beirut magazine’s report.

The Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine, which in addition to Steen claims to be holding two other Americans and an Indian professor, said in March that Steen “is suffering from an illness and he might die” very soon.

Steen’s wife, Virginia, said then that her husband was not sick when he was taken hostage. She appealed to his captors to give him adequate medical care.

Israeli Refusal

The underground group offered to release Steen in return for 100 Arab guerrillas held in Israel, but Israel refused and said it would not bow to blackmail.

Since then, there have been no reports about Steen’s health.

The last foreign hostages released in Lebanon were two Frenchmen freed Nov. 27 by the pro-Iranian Revolutionary Justice Organization. The next day, Premier Jacques Chirac thanked the Tehran government for its role in the hostages’ release.

Eight Americans and at least 12 other foreign nationals, including Church of England hostage negotiator Terry Waite, are still missing and believed held by various Muslim fundamentalist groups.