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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Lebanon
Index
On June 14, 1985, American attention was riveted on Lebanon
once again. A TWA airliner, Flight 847 en route from Athens to
Rome, was hijacked by Shia terrorists of the Hizballah organization
who demanded the release of Shia prisoners held in Kuwait, Israel,
and Spain. The airliner was forced to fly to Beirut, where nineteen
passengers were released, then to Algiers, where twenty-two more
were freed. It then returned to Beirut where on June 15 one of the
passengers, a United States Navy diver, was murdered. Seven
American passengers, who, according to the terrorists, had Jewish-
sounding surnames, were taken off the jet by Hizballah terrorists
and sequestered in Beirut. Then, about a dozen Amal members joined
the hijackers on the airplane, and the pilot was forced once again
to fly to Algiers, where sixty more passengers were freed. On the
following day the airplane returned to Beirut with the thirty-two
remaining passengers. Approximately 200 Lebanese Army soldiers
withdrew from the vicinity of Beirut International Airport, leaving
the area in the control of Amal. In response to suspicions that the
United States was planning a military rescue of the hostages, the
terrorists moved the passengers off the airplane and sequestered
them in various groups dispersed throughout Beirut. Amal and
Hizballah members mined the runways at the airport to prevent a
rescue attempt.
On June 17, the third day of the crisis, Amal leader and
Lebanese minister of justice Nabih Birri agreed to "mediate" and
take responsibility for the safety of the hostages. Birri's
intervention appeared hypocritical because his men were holding
most of the hostages and controlled the hijacked jet. Nevertheless,
the Hizballah organization retained control of seven kidnapped
Americans, leaving Birri unable to negotiate independently.
Accordingly, Birri adopted a hardline stance and refused to release
any hostages until Israel released 700 Shia detainees. Indeed, on
June 24 Birri actually added another condition for the hostages'
release, stipulating that United States warships leave Lebanese
waters.
The deadlock was finally broken through a series of complex and
controversial political maneuvers. The United States, determined
not to concede to the terrorists' demands, refused to request
Israel to release its Shia prisoners but acknowledged that it would
welcome such a move. Israel, also unwilling as a matter of policy
to negotiate with terrorists, refused to release its prisoners
unless requested by the United States to do so. The thirty-nine
hostages were ultimately freed on June 30. On July 1, Israel
announced that it was ready to release the Shia detainees from its
prison. Over the next several weeks, Israel released over 700 Shia
prisoners, but Israel denied that the prisoners' release was
related to the hijacking.
Hostage-taking has become commonplace in Lebanon. By 1987 the
International Committee of The Red Cross estimated that 6,000
Lebanese had been kidnapped and or had disappeared since 1975. The
systematic kidnapping of Western civilians began a few years after
the Civil War. Perhaps the first victim whose case was widely
publicized was American University of Beirut president David Dodge,
abducted by Shia terrorists in 1981 and freed in 1982. As of
September 1987, twenty-three foreigners--most of whom were
journalists, diplomats, or teachers--were believed to be held
hostage by various terrorist organizations in Lebanon. Of this
total, nine were American. Terry Anderson, chief Middle East
correspondent for the Associated Press, had been in captivity the
longest. Anderson, seized on March 16, 1985, by the Shia
fundamentalist Islamic Jihad Organization, was one of six hostages
who had been held for more than two years. American television
correspondent Charles Glass was seized on June 17, 1987. A
previously unknown group, the "Organization for the Defense of Free
People," claimed responsibility. Three hostages were Britons,
including Anglican Church envoy Terry Waite, who disappeared
January 20, 1986, while on a negotiating mission to free the other
kidnap victims. Other hostages included one of two citizens of the
Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) abducted in January 1987
by an organization calling itself "Strugglers for Freedom." The
West Germans were seized shortly after the West German government
arrested Muhammad Ali Hamadi, a Shia terrorist leader who allegedly
masterminded the 1985 TWA hijacking. Six French citizens, two of
whom were diplomats, also remained in captivity in late 1987, as
did an Indian professor, an Irish professor, an Italian
businessman, and a Republic of Korea (South Korea) diplomat.
Little information was available concerning the circumstances
of the hostages. In late June 1987, the Lebanese magazine Ash
Shira reported that some American hostages had been transferred
from Beirut to Iran where they were being put on "trial" and that
Imad Mughniyyah and Abdul Hadi Hamadi, security chiefs of the
Hizballah organization, had visited Tehran to testify in the
"trial."
Since 1982 seven kidnapped foreigners are believed to have been
murdered by their captors. On October 3, 1985, the Islamic Jihad
Organization claimed to have killed the United States Central
Intelligence Agency Beirut chief of station, William Buckley, whom
it had abducted on March 16, 1984. The Islamic Jihad Organization
later released to a Beirut newspaper a photograph purporting to
depict his corpse. Press reports stated that Buckley had been
transferred to Iran, where he was tortured and killed. One of four
Soviet diplomats kidnapped by the Islamic Liberation Organization
on September 30, 1985, was killed by his captors; the other three
were released a month later. On February 10, 1986, the Islamic
Jihad Organization released a photograph that claimed to show the
body of French citizen Michel Seurat, who had been kidnapped
earlier. On April 17, 1986, the bodies of three American University
of Beirut employees, American citizen Peter Kilburn and Britons
John Douglas and Philip Padfield, were discovered near Beirut. The
Revolutionary Organization of Socialist Muslims claimed to have
"executed" the three men in retaliation for the United States air
raid on Libya on April 15, 1986. On April 23, 1986, a Beirut
newspaper received a videotape film showing a man being hanged. The
Revolutionary Organization of Socialist Muslims claimed the man was
British citizen Alec Collet, who had been kidnapped more than a
year earlier.
A few fortunate Western hostages have escaped from their
captors. American citizen Frank Regier, engineering professor at
the American University of Beirut, was freed after several months
in captivity by Amal militiamen, who raided the Beirut hideout of
his extremist captors on April 15, 1984. On February 14, 1985,
American journalist Jeremy Levin escaped from his captors in the
Biqa Valley. On April 11, 1986, French captive Michel Brillant
escaped several days after his abduction when his captors were
surprised by a party of hunters in the Biqa Valley. On July 16,
1986, a Saudi Arabian diplomat was freed when the Lebanese Army
caught his captors. On September 26, 1986, British journalist David
Hirst escaped by bolting from his captors' automobile in a Shia
neighborhood of Beirut, and several days later French television
correspondent Jean-Marc Sroussi escaped from a locked shed days
after his capture. American Charles Glass escaped in August 1987,
two months after his capture.
Only a few hostages have been released by their captors. On May
20, 1985, Saudi Arabian consul Husayn Farrash was released by
Muslim fundamentalists after over a year in captivity. In mid-
September 1985, the Reverend Benjamin Weir, a Presbyterian minister
held hostage since May 1984, was freed by the Islamic Jihad
Organization; on July 26, 1986, the same group released Father
Lawrence Martin Jenco, who had been held since January, 1985; and
on November 2, 1986, American University of Beirut hospital
administrator David Jacobsen was released after more than a year
and a half in captivity. Americans Weir, Jenco, and Jacobsen had
been held by the same Islamic Jihad Organization cell, as Terry
Anderson and Thomas Sutherland, who in September 1987 remained in
captivity. Several other hostages have been released by various
groups, including a Spanish diplomat, a French journalist, two
British women, a West German Siemens employee, and two Cypriot
students.
* * *
A wide variety of published sources discuss Lebanese national
security issues, although information on the armed forces is
fragmentary. Several impressionistic but vivid accounts of
Lebanon's war, based on the authors' firsthand observations,
provide a good introduction to the topic. The most prominent among
these are Going All the Way by Jonathan C. Randall; Final
Conflict and Death of a Country by John Bulloch; and
Israel's Lebanon War by Ze'ev Schiff and Ehud Ya'ari. David
C. Gordon's books, The Republic of Lebanon and Lebanon:
The Fragmented Nation, provide a good general overview. For a
scholarly treatment of Lebanese political-military affairs, Michael
C. Hudson's dated but seminal The Precarious Republic is
useful for background information. More current scholarly works
include The War for Lebanon, 1970-1983 by Itamar Rabinovich,
The Lebanese Civil War by Marius Deeb, and Conflict and
Violence in Lebanon by Rashid Khalidi. The contributions on
Lebanon by Itamar Rabinovich and Yosef Olmert in the annual
Middle East Contemporary Survey are a useful reference
source. Other sources focus on more specific issues. Rashid Khalidi
concentrates on the Palestinian presence in Lebanon in Under
Siege. The Syrian role in Lebanon is explored in Syria and
the Lebanese Crisis by Adeed I. Dawisha and Syrian
Intervention in Lebanon by Naomi J. Weinberger. Middle East
Insight, a periodical, frequently publishes articles about
Lebanon, including Richard Augustus Norton's work on the Shia
community. Journalistic coverage of Lebanese affairs by the
international news media is comprehensive. In addition, Lebanon has
a relatively large domestic press, although much of its coverage
represents partisan viewpoints. Among the most authoritative
English-language Lebanese publications is the Middle East
Reporter. (For further information and complete citations, see Bibliography.
Data as of December 1987
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