The last two Westerners held hostage in Lebanon were handed over to a German envoy Wednesday and flew to a reunion with their families on the Mediterranean island of Crete.
The release of the two German aid workers ended an eight-year saga in which nearly 100 foreigners were kidnapped, most of them by pro-Iranian Shiite Muslim radicals.Heinrich Struebig and Thomas Kemptner, who were first reported turned over to Syrian officials on Monday night, finally surfaced Wednesday at the office of Prime Minister Rashid Solh. They looked fit and wore dark suits and ties.
"I'm fine," Struebig said when a reporter asked how it felt to be free after more than three years in captivity.
The two men were kidnapped by a group that tried to exchange them for two Lebanese brothers imprisoned in Germany for terrorism.
Germany refused an exchange, but diplomats in Lebanon said Germany won the hostages' release by agreeing to ease prison conditions for the brothers. Germany's RTL television network, without giving a source, said Germany agreed to free the brothers and pay $12 million in exchange for the hostages.
In Bonn, Dieter Vogel, a spokesman for German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, denied
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Germany made any deal.
"These reports are wrong," he said Wednesday on German radio. "No ransom money was ever paid and will never be paid."
Struebig, 51, and Kemptner, 30, were escorted to the prime minister's office by the Beirut chief of Syrian intelligence.
After being handed over to German envoy Bernd Schmidbauer in a 10-minute ceremony during which they made no statements, the former hostages were examined and pronounced "physically well" by Lebanese doctors.
They met with President Elias Hrawi, then flew on a German government plane to Greece's Souda Bay air base in western Crete, where their families had been waiting since Tuesday night. The men embraced several relatives, then were taken for an examination by German doctors.
The families were to have lunch later at the officer's club. A Greek air force spokesman said he did not know when they would leave for Germany.
Soldiers kept reporters and photographers at a distance.
Schmidbauer and the former captives drove to Beirut's airport in a limousine escorted by a 50-vehicle motorcade of Lebanese soldiers led by six police motorcycles with sirens wailing.
"The release of the two German hostages closes the dark chapter of hostage-taking in Lebanon forever," Solh told reporters when he handed the hostages over to Schmidbauer.
It was the first time Lebanon's leaders had been directly involved in a hostage release. Previously, it was common practice for hostages to be handed over to their governments in Syria's capital, Damascus.
There was no official explanation for why Lebanese authorities were more involved this time. But it appeared Syria, the main power broker in Lebanon with 40,000 soldiers on its soil, was trying to give greater credibility to the Lebanese government.
U.N. hostage negotiator Giandomenico Picco, who was instrumental in releasing the last nine American and British hostages last year, stood behind Struebig and Kemptner during the handover.
Solh expressed hope that Lebanon would be able now "to open a new era of cooperation with Germany, the European Community and the rest of the world."
Gripped by an acute economic crisis, Lebanon has been eager to close the hostage file and get financial assistance from European nations to rebuild from its crippling 1975-1990 civil war.
Struebig and Kemptner were abducted May 16, 1989, in southern Lebanon, where they were working for a private German relief organization.