Terry Anderson, journalist held hostage in Lebanon for 7 years, dies at age 76
Terry Anderson, the Associated Press correspondent whose seven-year captivity in Lebanon made him one of the longest-held American hostages in that country’s civil war, has died. He was 76.
A cause of death was not given, though his daughter, Sulome Anderson, said he had recently had heart surgery before dying Sunday at his home in Greenwood Lake, N.Y.
Anderson was AP’s chief Middle East correspondent when he was snatched at gunpoint from the streets of Beirut in 1985 by members of the Shiite Muslim group that would become Hezbollah.
He was released in 1991 after nearly seven years of beatings, torture, death threats and other brutality. His captors chained him to a wall, held guns to his head and stuck him in solitary confinement. It was an ordeal he would chronicle in his 1993 memoir “Den of Lions.”
When Archbishop of Canterbury Terry Waite arrived to try and negotiate the journalist’s release, he was taken hostage, too.
Anderson gave as good as he got, demanding better treatment and food, debating politics and religion with those holding him prisoner, and teaching his fellow hostages ways to communicate without their tormentors knowing, AP said.
When he was finally released, his colleagues at the newswire’s New York City headquarters showered him with a hero’s welcome.
“He never liked to be called a hero, but that’s what everyone persisted in calling him,” said his daughter, whose mother had been six months pregnant with her when her father was snatched.
He returned to Lebanon five years after his release to make an hourlong CNN film, “A Return to the Lion’s Den,” about the country’s strides toward rebuilding after 16 years of civil war.
After returning to the States, Anderson suffered from PTSD. He spent years as a journalism professor, public speaker, restaurateur and bar owner, among other pursuits.
He also advocated for causes such as the Vietnam Children’s Fund and the Committee to Protect Journalists, according to The Wall Street Journal.
He and Sulome (photo, after his release in 1991) were estranged until she visited Lebanon and confronted some of his kidnappers, publishing her own acclaimed book, “The Hostage’s Daughter,” in 2017.
While Anderson married her mother, Madeleine Bassil, after his return, they divorced a few years later. Married and divorced two other times besides that, the journalist is also survived by another daughter, Gabrielle Anderson, from his first marriage, and by a sister and brother.
“Though my father’s life was marked by extreme suffering during his time as a hostage in captivity, he found a quiet, comfortable peace in recent years,” Sulome Anderson told CNN.
“I saw him a week ago, and my partner asked him if he had anything on his bucket list, anything that he wanted to do,” she told AP. “He said, ‘I’ve lived so much and I’ve done so much. I’m content.’ ”