The Grendel Report: Hostage Remains Found

Friday, November 27, 2009

Hostage Remains Found

· guardian.co.uk, Monday 23 November 2009 18.54 GMT

An undated picture of British journalist Alec Collett, who was abducted in Lebanon in 1985. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

The remains of a British journalist who was kidnapped almost 25 years ago have been found in Lebanon, the Foreign Office confirmed today.

Experts found human bones in the Bekaa Valley last week and tests have now shown that they are Alec Collett's remains.

He was kidnapped at gunpoint in 1985 while working on an article for the United Nations about Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.

The following year his captors released a poor quality videotape showing a hooded figure who had apparently been hanged, but who was never formally identified.

Today his family said they were relieved he could finally be laid to rest.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: "The family are pleased to have closure after 24 years. Private arrangements will now be made."

Collett was one of several Britons targeted by one of the deadliest terrorist organisations of the day, the renegade Palestinian Abu Nidal group, which was backed successively by Iraq and Libya. The group claimed to have killed Collett, then 64, in revenge for a US air raid on Libya in April 1986, in which American planes flew from bases in Britain. Four years ago former member Zaid Hassan Safarini told the Sunday Times he witnessed the Briton's murder in 1986.

Sabri al-Banna, Abu Nidal's leader, had reportedly thought that Collett could be swapped for three members jailed in Britain after the attempted assassination in 1982 of Shlomo Argov, the Israeli ambassador to London.

The UN tried three times between 1995 and 2000 to find Collett's body. A spokesman for UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said today: "The secretary-general appreciates the role played by the relevant authorities in the United Kingdom and in Lebanon to resolve this matter after so many years.

"He is grateful for the work done by the Department of Safety and Security in helping to determine what happened to Mr Collett. Although he is saddened by Alec Collett's death, he hopes that the actions taken to find his remains can provide a measure of comfort to his loved ones.

"The secretary-general expresses his sincere sympathies to Alec Collett's family and would like to restate the commitment of the United Nations to assist them in the days ahead."

Collett was one of more than 80 foreigners who were taken hostage in Lebanon between 1984 and 1991. Fourteen were British nationals, including Terry Waite, the special envoy of the archbishop of Canterbury, and John McCarthy, then a television reporter. Most were held by Lebanese Shia groups with links to Iran.