Terry Anderson
Journalist and former hostage
TERRY Anderson, who has died at 76, was an American reporter held hostage for nearly seven years after being snatched from a street in war-torn Lebanon in 1985.
As the chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press, he was one of several Westerners – among them the British journalist John McCarthy and Terry Waite, then envoy to the Archbishop of Canterbury – who were abducted by members of the Shia Muslim group Hezbollah during a time of war that had plunged Lebanon into chaos.
Anderson had been reporting for several years on the rising violence gripping Lebanon as the country fought a war with Israel, while Iran funded militant groups trying to topple its government.
On March 16, 1985, a day off, he had taken a break to play tennis with photographer Don Mell and was dropping Mr Mell off at his home when gun-toting kidnappers dragged him from his car. He was likely targeted, he said, because he was one of the few Westerners still in Lebanon and because his role as a journalist aroused suspicion among members of Hezbollah.
What followed was nearly seven years of brutality during which he was beaten, chained to a wall, threatened with death, often had guns held to his head and was kept in solitary confinement for long periods of time.
Anderson was the longest held of the Western hostages Hezbollah abducted over the years, including Mr Waite, who had arrived to try to negotiate Anderson’s release.
By his own and other hostages’ accounts, he was also their most hostile prisoner, constantly demanding better food and treatment, arguing religion and politics with his captors, and teaching other hostages sign language and where to hide messages so they could communicate privately.
He managed to retain a quick wit and biting sense of humour during his long ordeal.
On his last day in Beirut he called the leader of his kidnappers into his room to tell him that he had just heard an erroneous radio report saying he’d been freed and was in Syria.
“I said: ‘Mahmound, listen to this, I’m not here. I’m gone, babes. I’m on my way to Damascus.’ And we both laughed,” he told biographer Giovanna Dell’Orto.
After his release, he returned to a hero’s welcome at the AP’s New York headquarters.
Anderson’s humour often hid the post traumatic stress disorder he acknowledged suffering for years afterwards. He said his faith as a Christian helped him let go of the anger. And something his wife later told him also helped him to move on: “If you keep the hatred, you can’t have the joy.”
At the time of his abduction, Anderson was engaged to be married and his future wife was six months’ pregnant with their daughter, Sulome.
The couple married soon after his release but divorced a few years later, and although they remained on friendly terms, Mr Anderson and his daughter were estranged for years.
She said of her father: “He never liked to be called a hero, but that’s what everyone persisted in calling him.”
After returning to the US in 1991, Anderson led a peripatetic life, giving public speeches, teaching journalism at several prominent universities and, at various times, operating a blues bar, Cajun restaurant, horse ranch and gourmet restaurant.
He won millions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets after a federal court concluded that the country played a role in his capture, then lost most of it to bad investments. He filed for bankruptcy in 2009.
Upon retiring from the University of Florida in 2015, he settled on a small horse farm in a quiet, rural section of northern Virginia he had discovered while camping with friends.