By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Special to The New York Times
PARIS, Aug. 11--Jerome Leyraud, the French relief worker who was held hostage in Lebanon for 60 hours, flew back to France tonight and said his captors had never told him of their threats to kill him if other hostages were (not) freed.
Mr. Leyraud, the 26-year-old head of the Beirut office of the Doctors of the World, was released near dawn today after the Syrian and Lebanese authorities launched an intensive manhunt. He was found blindfolded with his hands tied behind his back after his captors pushed him out of a car in West Beirut, Lebanese officials said.
"They never told me why they kidnapped me," Mr. Leyraud told reporters after arriving at Nice's international airport. "I didn't know about their threats to kill me."
Mr. Leyraud was kidnapped on Thursday, the same day that John McCarthy, a British television journalist who had been held for more than five years, was released from captivity. A previously unknown group calling itself the Organization for the Defense of Prisoners' Rights said it had kidnapped Mr. Leyraud and threatened to kill him if any additional Western hostages in Lebanon were released.
Despite the group's threats and its accusations that he was an intelligence agent, Mr. Leyraud said his captors treated him well. "My captors were very polite to me," he told French television and radio. "They treated me with as much courtesy as captors would. There was no violence."
All day long, friends stopped by to congratulate Mr. Leyraud's parents at their news shop in the village of Grimaud, not far from Saint-Tropez in the south of France. His parents, Michael and Aimee, broke out a bottle of champagne before French television cameras to celebrate.
"I feel as light as a butterfly," Reuters quoted his mother as saying. "I want to knock on every door to tell people he's been freed."
She added: "What happened was an accident. That's life. They went after the wrong person. I know my son. He is not a secret agent."
France's Prime Minister, Edith Cresson, sent Mr. Leyraud's parents a telegram saying, "Please believe that I share your happiness now."
Tall, animated and relaxed, Mr. Leyraud said tonight that three armed men abducted him on Thursday as he was leaving a supermarket. He said they drove him away in a Mercedes-Benz and kept him in the same apartment throughout his 60 hours in detention. He said the apartment seemed to have been prepared to hold a hostage in expectation of his arrival.
"They chatted with me," he was quoted by Reuters as saying. "I always had contact with someone."
He added: "At the beginning I had a towel around my head when I went to the toilet to prevent me from seeing my captors. By the end they simply asked me to close my eyes. It was not torture."
Mr. Leyraud said he did not have any contact with any of the 10 other Western hostages being held in Lebanon. After his release in Beirut and again at the Nice airport, he said he hoped that all European and American hostages in Lebanon would soon be freed.
A graduate student in political science, Mr. Leyraud was serving as administrator in Beirut for the Doctors of the World, a group that provides medical aid in areas hit by war or natural disasters. He said he would consider returning to Lebanon "because humanitarian action there is very important, and it must not be stopped."
In a communique issued by its Foreign Ministry, France thanked "the Syrians and Lebanese Governments for their strenuous efforts that allowed the liberation of our countryman."
France's Minister for Humanitarian Action, Bernard Kouchner, a founder of two medical relief groups, was waiting with Mr. Leyraud's parents when the freed man arrived in Nice on a special Government plane. "We have to rejoice," Mr. Kouchner said.
(article accompanied by photograph of U.S. President George Bush captioned:
"I'd like to see every country release them," President Bush said of captives, "and I'd like to see the whole world turn away from holding hostages." Robert Gates, the deputy national security adviser, watched as the President talked to reporters yesterday.)
(text of August 12, 1991 New York Times article)
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