An emotional Terry Anderson, breaking down in tears as he thanked those who campaigned for his release, said Friday he doesn't hate the Shiite Muslim kidnappers who held him for 6 1/2 dark years.
"They did great wrong to me and my family," he said of his captors in Lebanon. But he said he was looking forward, not back: "I've got a whole new life. It's going to be happy."Speaking to reporters at the U.S. military hospital in Wiesbaden, Anderson said he believed he had been taken captive merely because he was an American. He also said he believed the U.S. government, his sister Peggy Say, and his employer, The Associated Press, had done all they could on his behalf.
"I've been just stunned and overcome in the last two days by the welcome," he said. "I'm very, very happy."
Anderson, 44, the chief Middle East correspondent for the AP, was freed Wednesday by his pro-Iranian kidnappers. He had been the last American held in Lebanon, and the one who spent the longest in captivity.
Say, who had crusaded tirelessly for Anderson's freedom, introduced him to the hundreds of reporters. Anderson, teary-eyed, gave her a long hug and kissed her.
"I was very, very proud of her," he said of Say. She said, "I'm incredibly proud of him, but he's still just my little brother!"
Also with Anderson was the president and chief executive officer of The Associated Press, Louis D. Boccardi. Both Say and Anderson thanked the AP for helping her campaign to secure Anderson's freedom, including financing her many trips abroad. "I think the AP did everything it possibly could," Anderson said.
Two other Americans - Joseph Cicippio and Alann Steen - were freed this week, and two Germans remain in captivity. Cicippio was welcomed home Friday in Norristown, Pa.
Anderson said he had no regrets about having stayed in Beirut despite the growing threat of kidnapping. "I don't see how Icould have done anything else and stayed on the job," he said. "I was the chief Middle East correspondent. I belonged in Beirut."
Although his work put him in danger's way, he said he did not think it accounted for his being targeted for abduction. "I don't think it was me, a journalist," he said. "I just think I was capturable, unfortunately."
Speaking of his captors, he said: "What would you expect them to say? - `America is the enemy and . . . you are an American.' "
Asked if he thought the U.S. government had done enough to win his release, Anderson said: "I think the United States in the end took the right policy in not negotiating with my captors."
Even so, he said, half-jokingly, "Frankly, I wouldn't have cared had he given them an H-bomb, just to get me out of that place!"
Entering the hall, Anderson grinned and waved his hands exuberantly over his head. When he spoke, however, his voice was choked with emotion. "I didn't expect this," he said. "I was all cool and calm and ready to go."
Some of the reporters also were crying.
As the hourlong news conference went on, however, Anderson joked with the correspondents, speaking animatedly and gesturing expansively. Afterward, he shook hands with and hugged some of the journalists, many of whom are friends.
Anderson, who grew up in upstate New York, was clad in a white Buffalo Bills sweatshirt. Behind him, a blue sign read: "Welcome Back to Freedom."
After being released, Anderson had appeared briefly before reporters at the Syrian Foreign Ministry in Damascus. But this was his first full-scale news conference since his release and the first time he disclosed details about his captivity.
He said he was kept in 15 to 20 different places during his captivity, sometimes in an apartment that had been converted to a jail by placing metal sheets over the doors and windows. Among the worst of his quarters was a cramped underground cell with no light, he said.
Only in the past few years did he have a radio, Anderson said, but he said he usually had other hostages for company.
At the most difficult times, he said, "my faith kept me from giving in to despair." He also said he was drawing on that faith to help him forgive the captors who robbed him of nearly seven years of freedom.
"I don't hate anybody," he said. "I'm a Christian and a Catholic, and I really believe that and it is required of me to forgive no matter how hard that is, and I am determined to do that."
Anderson said he exercised during periods in which his captors removed his chains - and engaged in mental exercises to keep his sanity. These ranged from imagining how to set up a farming operation to starting up a newspaper and hiring staff.
Anderson had been given a nearly clean bill of health a day earlier, with doctors reporting a sinus infection that would be treated with drugs and a lung inflammation that was expected to clear up on its own. He also needs some dental work.
(Additional information)
2 may go free soon\
Germany's Foreign Ministry said Friday that the last two Western hostages, two German relief workers, could be freed before Christmas. Heinrich Struebig, 50, and Thomas Kemptner, 30, have been held in Lebanon since May 1989. Their captors have demanded freedom for two brothers from the Lebanese Hamadi clan imprisoned in Germany for terrorist crimes.