Former hostage Thomas Sutherland had an emotional reunion with family members Tuesday, hugging and kissing a crowd of relatives on the balcony of a U.S. military hospital.
Sutherland, freed after 6 1/2 years of captivity in Lebanon, got an enormous bearhug from his wife, Jean. There wasn't much talk, only - as his wife put it -"body language."Asked how he felt, an ecstatic Sutherland put up both thumbs, then raised a fist like a victorious prizefighter. He was surrounded by his wife, two daughters and two brothers.
The extraordinary moments, viewed by a crowd of reporters in the rain below, came after Sutherland had lunch with his wife and one of their three daughters, Kit. As he went to the hospital balcony for a photo session, another daughter, Joan, arrived along with his two brothers, William and Peter.
After a lot of hugging and kissing, Sutherland introduced his family to reporters but made no further comment, saying he would hold a news conference Wednesday.
Earlier, when Mrs. Sutherland arrived at the Frankfurt airport en route to the Wiesbaden hospital, she said she had talked with her husband by telephone soon after he was freed Monday.
"It was incredible," she said. "It was just like it was yesterday. We took up where we left off."
Sutherland, 60, who arrived from Syria before dawn, will undergo medical tests at the hospital. As he rested earlier in the day, the hospital issued a statement saying he "appears to be in good medical condition."
Mrs. Sutherland was en route from Beirut to Ames, Iowa, for her father's funeral when she learned of her husband's release Monday. She landed in Newark, N.J., and took a flight to Germany.
Kit Sutherland, a research associate at Colorado State University, said on her way to the hospital that the family had gone "helter-skelter, everyone has gone in all different directions" to meet her father.
Asked what she would say to him, she paused and then uttered a phrase in Arabic. It means, "Hello, how are you, praise God," she said, recalling that her father had often used it himself.
She said it was too early to discuss the family's plans for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. "It depends on how much privacy Dad needs," she said.
Sutherland arrived in Frankfurt early Tuesday on a U.S. Air Force C-141 airplane and was taken in the U.S. ambassador's limousine to the military hospital in Wiesbaden, about a half-hour drive.
There, he joyfully sniffed a bouquet of flowers.
"I haven't seen flowers in 6 1/2 years," he said.
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(Additional information)
Those still held hostage in Lebanon\ TERRY ANDERSON, 44, chief Middle East correspondent of The Associated Press. Kidnapped March 16, 1985, by Islamic Jihad. The longest-held of all six hostages. Worked in AP bureaus in Tokyo and Johannesburg before being assigned to Beirut in 1982. His second daughter, Sulome, was born three months after he was kidnapped. His father and brother died of cancer during his captivity.
ALANN STEEN, 52, communications professor at Beirut University College and former U.S. Marine. Kidnapped Jan. 24, 1987. A native of Boston, completed undergraduate and master's degree programs at Humboldt State University, California. Released hostages said he escaped in his first year of captivity but was caught and badly beaten by his captors.
HEINRICH STRUEBIG, 50, and THOMAS KEMPTNER, 30, Germans who worked for the ASME-Humanitas relief group in Palestinian refugee camps near Sidon, south Lebanon. Kidnapped May 16, 1989. No group has claimed responsibility. Militia leaders in the area initially said they were held by radical Palestinians linked to Abu Nidal. Apparently have since been handed over to Shiite extremists.
ALBERTO MOLINARI, 72, an Italian businessman. Kidnapped Sept. 11, 1985, his 66th birthday, as he crossed Beirut's dividing Green Line from the Christian sector to the Muslim zone. Had lived in Beirut for 20 years. Nothing has been heard of him since. No group claims to hold him. Shiite leaders in Lebanon said in September 1991 that he was dead.
In addition, Briton Alec Collett was kidnapped in 1985, and British officials say he is assumed dead following claims he was killed in 1986 in retaliation for British assistance in U.S. bombing raids on Libya.