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Wednesday, 4/30/97 Hostage-holding terrorists deserve little sympathy Government sends clear message that terrorism will not be tolerated, especially when innocent victims' lives in jeopardy

By Howard Kleinberg Immediately upon seeing, via history's first live telecast of an assault on hostage-holding terrorists, that all 14 guerrillas died in the bloody climax, I recognized that soon the emphasis would turn from the brilliant rescue to whether or not the rebels were summarily executed. It did not take long to percolate. As expected, the focus has shifted to the probability that many of the hostage-holders were killed by Peruvian assault forces for no reason other than they held 72 terrorized people against their will for 126 days. By Monday of this week, the 14 Tupac Amaru rebels no longer were well-trained, fanatical guerrillas who held daily military drills and who had booby-trapped the rooms and hallways of the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima, which they had taken by force months earlier. They were, according to the Bolivian ambassador held during the ordeal, "four adults and 10 children." Immediately, one would consider such a statement as the onset of "Stockholm syndrome," which is when hostages begin to relate to their captors. It would seem that the Bolivian was so taken, but Peru's deputy energy minister wasn't. He talked about the rebels' hate and resentment. "They were headed for the grave," he told reporters, "and they were taking us with them." Newspapers and TV screens are becoming saturated with stories and film of grieving parents contending that their now-dead rebel children, ignorant peasants from the Peruvian jungles, were pawns at the hands of Nestor Cerpa and the three other experienced terrorists. Two families claimed their children had been kidnapped years earlier by Tupac Amaru guerrillas. Carried to its extreme, one might begin to believe that 82, rather than 72, hostages were held by four Tupac Amaru rebels. I choose not to. I choose to wave off the sympathy-provoking articles and interviews. I choose to see the 14 as one, a trained unit, that on Dec. 17 invaded the Japanese ambassador's residence, fully armed, and initially held hundreds of party guests prisoner and continued to hold 72 for months while their victims' families lived lives of despair, not knowing if ever they'd see their loved ones again. The message sent by the Peruvian government was clear: terrorism will not be tolerated. The penalty for terrorism is immediate death. Arguments will persist that the terrorists were entitled to a trial and that the government should not have gotten down to the terrorists' level in dispensing street justice. But we have reached a point in this planet's history where terrorism is becoming so widespread that it needs to be dealt with harshly because harshness is something terrorists can understand. There was other criticism suggesting that keeping some of the rebels alive might have afforded Peru the opportunity to accumulate information about other rebel activities. Peru is a nation that has been besieged by vicious, bloody rebel activity for several decades. It knows all it needs to know about rebel activity. What it really needs to do is rid itself - by any means possible - of the oft-murderous rebels who attack villages and shoot or hack innocent people to death. We probably will never know how many rebels were killed by the first blast from the tunnel below where they were playing indoor soccer, and we won't know for sure how many threw down their arms and pleaded, in vain, for mercy. One can only say, and hope that present and future terrorists hear it, that none of this would have happened had not the 14 armed guerrillas - regardless of age, regardless of level of education - terrorized innocent people for 126 days. Kleinberg, a former editor of the Miami News, is a columnist for Cox Newspapers. His e-mail address is hkmiami@aol.com.

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