Lebanon Hostage Crisis - Victims

Victims

With the exception of a few hostages such as CIA Bureau Chief William Francis Buckley and Marine Colonel William Higgins, (who were both killed) most of the hostages were chosen not for any political activity or alleged misdeeds they had committed, but because of the country they came from and the ease of kidnapping them. Despite this, they were often treated quite cruelly, with repeated beatings and mock executions.

Some of the more famous victims include:

• David S. Dodge. Perhaps the first victim whose case was widely publicized was American University of Beirut president David Dodge, abducted 19 July 1982 and freed on July 21, 1983. According to Lebanese journalist Hala Jaber, "Dodge was abducted initially by pro-Palestinian Lebanese" in hopes of pressuring the Americans to pressure Israel which had invaded Lebanon to stop Lebanon-based PLO attacks. After the PLO evacuated Lebanon, "the Iranians had taken charge of" Dodge and moved him from Beqaa valley to Tehran. The Iranians hoped to use Dodge to gain the release of four Iranian officials who had been kidnapped by Christian militia Lebanese Forces in July 1982. The four Iranians were never found.

Dodge "spent the next three months in the infamous Evin jail, where the Iranian Revolutionary Guard had executed hundreds of the Shah's followers in the wake of Khomeini's Islamic Revolution. Whenever he was interrogated, he was asked for information about the missing Iranians."

Dodge was released on the first anniversary of his abduction, reportedly because Syrian President Assad was "enraged by Iran's role in the abduction". Dodge "was taken out of his cell, given back the clothes he had worn on the day of his abduction, and driven back to the airport by an official of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. From there he flew first class to Syria. ... At Damascus airport his escort handed him over to a waiting car ... the following morning he was handed over to the American embassy."

• Benjamin Weir. The Presbyterian minister was kidnapped in May 1984 by three armed men while strolling with his wife. Weir may have thought he was safe from harm from Muslims because he lived in Shiite West Beirut working "closely with various Muslim-oriented charity and relief groups", and had lived in Lebanon since 1958. Two days after his abduction, a telephone message claimed: "Islamic Jihad organization claims it is responsible for the abduction ... in order to renew our acceptance of Reagan's challenge and to confirm our commitment of the statement ... that we will not leave any American on Lebanese soil." He was released mid-September 1985.

• Terry A. Anderson, chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press, was the best known, and longest held, hostage believed to be captured by Shiite Hezbollah or Islamic Jihad Organization Anderson, was seized on March 16, 1985, finally being released December 4, 1991.

• Charles Glass. American television correspondent Charles Glass was seized on June 17, 1987, by a previously unknown group, the "Organization for the Defense of Free People", (believed to be one of Hezbollah's aliases) he escaped 62 days later.

• Rudolph Cordes and Alfred Schmidt, 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 Flight 847 hijacking and killed diver Robert Dean Stethem. Muhammad Ali Hammadi was not released at that time but was in 2006, "in an apparent exchange for a German hostage in Iraq." Schmidt was released in September 1987. Cordes was released in September 1988.

• Thomas Sutherland, former Dean of Agriculture at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon was kidnapped by Islamic Jihad members near his Beirut home on June 9, 1985. He was released on November 18, 1991 at the same time as Terry Waite, having been held hostage for 2353 days.

• Terry Waite. Anglican Church envoy Terry Waite, who disappeared January 20, 1987, while on a negotiating mission to free the other kidnap victims, spent almost five years in captivity, nearly four years of it in solitary confinement, after he was seized by Islamic Jihad from a go-between's house in Lebanon on January 20, 1987. Before his release in November 1991 he was frequently blindfolded. He was beaten early in his period of imprisonment and subjected to a mock execution. He was chained, suffered desperately from asthma, and was once transported in a refrigerator as his captors moved him about.