A German official said Monday he expected two German hostages in Lebanon would be freed within 48 hours, ending an eight-year saga in which scores of Westerners were kidnapped.
The official Iranian news agency reported from the Lebanese capital that the Germans would be freed at 8 p.m. (11 a.m. MDT) Monday. The Islamic Republic News Agency quoted unidentified sources as saying the hostages later would be turned over to "a German minister." The report gave no other details.Bernd Schmidbauer, an envoy for Chancellor Helmut Kohl, said the hostages would be turned over to officials in Beirut rather than in Syria, as had been the practice in previous hostage releases.
Heinrich Struebig, 51, and Thomas Kemptner, 30, are the last Westerners held by pro-Iranian Shiite Muslim kidnappers in Lebanon.
"We expect to have a good chance, a good result, within the next 48 hours," Schmidbauer said after meeting with Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa.
"I believe we're going to Beirut tomorrow . . . to take them (the hostages) home with us," he said.
A Lebanese security source said the Germans were moved to a basement jail in southern Beirut last week in preparation for their release. The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they earlier had been held separately at a sheep farm in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley and in a southern Beirut fishermen's slum.
Iranian officials said Sunday that the hostages' release was expected no later than Wednesday. Iran played a major role in trying to persuade the kidnappers to free the Germans.
The United Nations' hostage mediator, Giandomenico Picco, was somewhere in Lebanon or Syria, working on the Germans' release, U.N. sources said, also speaking on condition of anonymity. Picco was instrumental in freeing the last American and British hostages in Lebanon last year.
Struebig and Kemptner were working for the German humanitarian group ASME-Humanitas at Palestinian refugee camps when they were kidnapped May 16, 1989.