End of an Ordeal

There were times in her crushing solitude when she despaired of maintaining sanity. She endured for weeks under the threat of execution by her captors. At one point she was convinced that her country had abandoned her. But last week the long nightmare ended for French Archaeologist Franc,oise Claustre, 39. After 33 months as a political prisoner of rebel tribesmen in the remote Tibesti desert of northern Chad, Claustre was handed over, exhausted but unharmed, to French officials in Tripoli. Her rescuer: none other than Libya's mercurial leader, Muammar Gaddafi.

At a brief and carefully orchestrated press conference, Claustre reported that she had actually been released Dec. 13 but had asked to remain with the rebels until her husband Pierre, who was being held in a separate camp, was also freed. The couple finally left the rebels' stronghold under Libyan escort on Jan. 24. Four days later they arrived in Tripoli, where Gaddafi insisted on giving them an archaeological sightseeing tour before handing them over to the French.

While a captive, Mme. Claustre said, she taught herself to read and write Toubou, the language of the rebels, and performed normal cooking and cleaning chores done by Toubou women. "They understood my distress," she said. "And I tried as much as I could to integrate myself into their family life."

Asked if she had felt abandoned by France, she replied: "I think you all saw a film on French television in September 1975." Then she fell silent and seemed on the point of breaking down. The film, shot by French reporters in the rebels' desert camp, had movingly shown her in tears, denouncing France for having forgotten her. On French TV, it created a national sensation and put President Valery Giscard d'Estaing under intense pressure to find some way of securing her release.

From the beginning, the Claustre affair was one of the more bizarre, bungled diplomatic efforts in French history. Claustre was captured in the spring of 1974 while exploring pre-Islamic tombs with a young French cooperant --roughly the equivalent of a U.S. Peace Corpsman--and a West German doctor and his wife. In the rebels' attack, the doctor's wife was killed. West German officials quickly arranged a payoff for the doctor's return. Later, the cooperant escaped to Libya, leaving Mme. Claustre alone in the hands of a Maoist rebel leader named Hissene Habre, who demanded a ransom that included 80 tons of arms and ammunition in return for the release of his hostage. But France could not supply the arms without affronting the government of Chad President N'Garta Tombalbaye and losing influence throughout Africa.

The first French mistake was to send in as a negotiator Major Pierre Gallopin, who had served as a military adviser to the Chad government in its efforts to wipe out the very rebels who captured Claustre. Habre ordered his execution--reportedly by slitting open his abdomen and tying him to the hind legs of a camel. Four later envoys escaped alive, but were no more successful than Galopin in liberating Claustre. At one point, France delivered an $880,000 ransom in cash and promised another $ 1.4 million in the form of nonmartial military goods, including a field hospital. Habre refused the bait, and the result was the astonishing spectacle of a nuclear power virtually helpless before a guerrilla leader with a ragtag army of fewer than 1,000.

Humiliation and Horror. Meanwhile Pierre Claustre, frustrated by the delays, tried to free his wife by arranging an arms delivery to the rebels himself--and wound up as another prisoner. Finally, Habre was overthrown as rebel chief by Goukouni Oueddei last November.lt is thought that Oueddei depends on Libyan financial support and was thus amenable to Gaddafi's suggestion that the Claustres be freed. Presumably, the Libyan ruler felt they were more useful as the beneficiaries of a spectacular humanitarian gesture than as hostages.

Even after her liberation, the ordeal of Mme. Claustre continued to rankle in French public opinion. She and her husband, flown by a special Mystere 20 jet sent by Giscard, evaded hordes of newsmen in Paris. The couple immediately checked into a clinic for a series of intensive tests. But many Frenchmen were still asking why the affair had taken so long--and cost so much horror and humiliation--to resolve.

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