Hijacking Raises Hopes for Family of Previous Victim

Relatives of a British U.N. official who was kidnaped by terrorists outside Beirut in March are hoping that the attention surrounding the captivity of several dozen Americans on the TWA airliner hijacked to Beirut will focus more diplomatic attention on their attempts to bring him home.

The new hostage crisis comes a month after the wife of Alec Collett received a mysterious videotape showing him after he was captured by gunmen while on a three-month assignment in Lebanon for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency. The videotape arrived at Elaine Collett’s New York apartment in a package with no return address. She sent a copy of the videotape to her stepson, David Collett of North Hollywood.

“The families of the kidnaped people on the plane have only been living with this hell for four days,” Elaine Collett said. “But I’ve been living with the same pain for more than 2 1/2 months. You can’t help but think in a situation like this that government officials are not doing enough to bring him home.”

David Collett, 27, a moving company salesman, said he is more pragmatic and less emotional than his stepmother about his father’s predicament.

‘A Political Matter’

“It’s really more of a political matter, and it gets very complicated,” he said in a thick British accent. “I’m resentful of what’s happened, but I know that the U.S. government can’t go in there with guns blazing to rescue him. But I can see my father’s fear and anguish on that tape. And it’s awful to watch.”

Monday afternoon, David Collett stared glumly at the gaunt and tense image of his father on the videotape, which he played on his television.

“The conditions are acceptable, allowing for the constraints,” Alec Collett said on the tape, managing a faint smile. “Of course, I would like to be somewhere else, but I have no other choice at this point.”

David Collett said his father seemed to have lost weight, looked ill and obviously was being coaxed by someone. The tape did not reveal where Alec Collett was being held, who was holding him or even if he is still alive.

Was Helping Palestinians

Alec Collett, 63, was working for the U.N. project assisting Palestinian refugees when he was kidnaped while riding in a car near Khalde, just outside Beirut, according to U.N. officials.

U.N. spokesman John Defrates said Alec Collett and an Austrian companion were overtaken by another car, forced by the gunmen into the car and driven back to Khalde, where the Austrian man was released. The kidnapers then drove off with Alec Collett.

“It looks as though Collett was kidnaped because he is British,” Defrates commented at the time.

After a preliminary investigation, U.N. officials told Elaine Collett her husband had been kidnaped by a group calling itself the Revolutionary Organization of Socialist Muslims. She said the secretary general of the U.N. had appealed to the group to return Alec Collett, but never received a reply.

Mystery Grows

But the mystery surrounding the disappearance heightened when the package, postmarked in Switzerland, arrived at the apartment Elaine Collett shares with her husband and their 11-year-old son.

During the seven-minute videotape, Alec Collett, wearing a blue jogging suit, talked about how much he missed his wife and family. Then, after prompting from an off-camera interviewer, he said he was being treated well and fed regularly. He said he missed working with his colleagues at the United Nations, adding, “They are people I would enjoy working with in the future.”

But Alec Collett appeared weak, thin and tired. David Collett pointed to his father’s teeth, saying he had lost one as a captive.

No demands were made on the tape. The only other voice was that of a man occasionally asking a question of Alec Collett.

Hoped for Easter Together

The only indication of when the tape was made was Alec Collett’s statement that he would like to spend Easter with his family.

“We don’t really know who’s holding him, or why they are holding him,” David Collett said. “If they thought he was a spy, they would have found out he was not, so why are they still keeping him?”

“Alec is very active, and to see him sitting there looking the way he did, trying to convince me he was OK, was very moving,” Elaine Collett said. “He’s in a situation where he has no choice.”

Since receiving the tape, Elaine Collett said, she has spoken almost daily with John Miles, the director of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, to see if there is any new information on her husband.

David Collett said he received a copy of the videotape last week, then phoned the British general consul in Los Angeles, asking for updates on his father.

“I feel helpless, though,” he said. “I don’t think the U.S. government is interested in my father because he is not a U.S. citizen. I can’t do anything, but I think the British government could have done a lot more.”

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