Hostage who came back from HELL
After his death, remarkable story of how Tom Sutherland survived years in captivity
DURING the six long years that former Beirut hostage Thomas Sutherland spent in captivity, he feared he had become a ‘forgotten man’. Chained to the wall of a cell in near-total darkness for ‘23 hours and 50 minutes a day’, month after month, he and his fellow captives fought a mental battle to stay alive.
The Scots-born academic later admitted he contemplated taking his own life more than once during his ordeal, but he was repeatedly brought back from the brink of despair by an evolving camaraderie with his cellmates, including journalist Terry Anderson, and by the poetry of Robert Burns.
Professor Sutherland, whose death at the age of 85 was announced yesterday, would recite poetry for hours in his distinctive brogue while exchanging stories about life as a Stirlingshire farmer’s son with Anderson, a war correspondent and Vietnam vet, with whom he spent much of his time locked up.
Sutherland, a naturalised American, was dean of agriculture at the American University of Beirut when eight gunmen abducted him on June 9, 1985.
It was a time of great volatility in the Lebanese capital and the capture of hostages, including Sutherland, Anderson, BBC reporter John McCarthy, and Anglican peace envoy Terry Waite – who all spent time together, shackled just inches apart – came at the behest of Iranian-backed Shiite Hezbollah terrorists who wanted US military forces out of the bloody Lebanese civil war.
In their cell, Sutherland would teach Anderson the finer points of animal husbandry and French irregular verbs. Anderson, for his part, would describe how differential transmission worked. Their captors could chain their bodies, the two men reasoned, but they could not chain their minds.
‘If it hadn’t been for Terry, I probably would have committed suicide,’ said Sutherland following his eventual release. ‘Every time I got discouraged and put my head down on the pillow and said, “I’m done with all this”, Terry encouraged me, and that’s the reason I am alive today.’
His family, friends and colleagues never gave up hope. After his capture, his wife, Jean, an English lecturer at the university and daughter of a Scots emigré, defied warnings about her safety to return several times to Beirut to fight for his release at a time when she was not sure if he was even alive.
In his quieter moments, he must have wondered how the son of a Scots farmer could have become so bound up at the centre of a huge international storm.
Born on May 3, 1931, the fourth of six siblings, Thomas Sutherland was sports-mad as a youngster, preferring the football field to his father’s many acres.
After leaving Falkirk High School, he signed for Rangers while studying agriculture at Glasgow University, but eventually heeded his father’s advice to stick to his studies.
After graduating in 1953, he headed for Iowa State University, in Ames, where he worked as a research assistant for four years, receiving a master’s degree and doctorate in animal breeding.
His expertise would take him around the world.
Paying tribute yesterday, his niece, Marjorie Lally, said: ‘He was a very intelligent and charismatic man and a great teacher. We were a big family and would spend most summers together and when Uncle Tom came, well, he was really like one of our hero uncles.
‘He was a very good speaker with a mischievous sense of humour and would often speak at our local church. He spoke about Beirut after he came home and although he had suffered a fairly arduous time – most of it in solitary confinement – he retained his sense of humour and he never forgot his roots.
‘My sister Marion saw him recently and he was in good spirits. But he had been very frail for a long time, so it was not a great surprise when the news came through.’
AS a professor of animal genetics, he had been in Beirut helping to set up a new teaching department when he was captured. Gunmen piled into his university limousine and raced off to where a gang of young men were waiting.
He recalled: ‘I didn’t have time to take in much of the surroundings before one young fellow cried out, “The eyes; the eyes. Cover the eyes. ...” He pulled (a hood) over my head for good measure and though I blessedly didn’t know it then, that was the last time I would see the sun for the next six and a half years.’
Though he never believed his captors would kill him, he was mentally and physically tortured. On one occasion, he received ‘a bit of a biffing’ with a rubber truncheon when he lifted his blindfold to see if there was a guard who would let him go to the lavatory.
He said: ‘They hit me on the soles of the feet until I started to scream and they screamed louder than I did, telling me to stop, and then they beat me somewhere else. They prayed ahead of it so they were already forgiven before they started. Otherwise, we were treated not badly.’
Latterly, his captors became more friendly, offering the hostages books and allowing them to listen to the radio and watch TV.
On his eventual release in November 1991, after 2,353 agonising days in captivity, Sutherland flew into his adopted home of Fort Collins, where he had taught at Colorado State University (CSU), to be welcomed by balloons and bagpipes at a rally attended by 10,000 people.
A large Scottish contingent flew out to be there. His brother Willie said: ‘I always had hope and faith that one day he would be released, but the waiting has been awful. If we could have done something to help him it would have been better, but we felt completely helpless.’
Sutherland admitted to feeling overwhelmed by ‘a welcome that is truly beyond anybody’s wildest dreams’ as he arrived with Jean, and daughters Kit and Joan, having also been introduced to his grandchild, his eldest daughter Ann’s four-year-old daughter Simone.
He told reporters: ‘As we lay on those mattresses, frequently in the dark, we had no idea what was going on. We felt like forgotten men. So to come home to this kind of welcome, whew.’
Sutherland was made a professor emeritus at CSU and became a noted philanthropist after a US judge awarded him $35million (£26million) from the frozen assets of the Iranian government. He and his wife also wrote a book about his captivity called At Your Own Risk.
HE liked to joke about his ‘extended vacation paid for by the Shah of Iran’ as he donated to many causes, including a food bank and community radio. He said that, aside from allowing him to buy ‘a better bottle of bourbon once in a while’ and donate to good causes, the money had not changed him.
He underwrote the $1.1million (£830,000) purchase of a historic building in Fort Collins as the new home of the Bas Bleu Theatre Company. Professor Sutherland then took up acting at the age of 73 in a Bas Bleu production of Athol Fugard’s play A Lesson From Aloes about the perils of apartheid.
But he remained his own man, openly criticising US foreign policy on the Iraq War and Guantanamo and even attacking fellow hostage Terry Waite as a ‘super-egoist’ who had done little to effect the release of the hostages.
Yesterday, there was nothing but praise for Tom Sutherland. In a statement, CSU president Tony Frank said: ‘His spirit and optimism inspired the world, and the deep devotion of his family during the bleak years he was a hostage taught us a profound lesson of courage, faith and hope.’