Britons search for body of reporter killed in Civil War

BEIRUT: A British excavations team started a new search Sunday in the Bekaa Valley for the body of British journalist Alec Collett who is believed to have been killed during Lebanon’s 1975-90 Civil War. The search took place in Khellit al-Zayti, on the outskirts of Ayta al-Fekhar in the qada of Rashaya, a rocky area used during the Civil War as a military base for Palestinian factions and later for the Syrian army. 

The team marked the areas to be dug in red and blue, measured the site and took pictures under the supervision of the Lebanese Armed Forces and the Internal Security Forces. The military attache for the British Embassy in Beirut was also present. 

The members of the team were, however, very discrete about the search process and refused to give out any information to the media, simply saying that they suspected one particular site. 

Security measures were also reinforced during the search and journalists were not allowed to take any pictures. 

The attempt to locate Collett’s body was not the first – the United Nations had previously sent several research teams to the Bekaa where he is thought to be buried. Three UN delegations between 1995 and 2000 were thought to be digging in the correct place but only succeeded in finding bones that did not belong to Collett, said The Times in 2005. 

The outlet was quoting Zaid Hassan Safarini, a former Palestinian militant and an eyewitness in the case. The work of one delegation was even halted because of the then present Syrian forces, it added. 

Collett was kidnapped in 1985 while crossing a checkpoint near the airport on his way back from a Palestinian refugee camp in the south of Lebanon. He was kidnapped along with his Austrian driver on March 25 but the driver was later released. The Abu Nidal Organization (ANO), also known as the Fatah Revolutionary Council claimed responsibility of the crime. 

Two video tapes with Collett sending messages to his family were released during the first year of his kidnapping. In 1986, however, a Beirut television station received a video tape of him being killed by hanging. Nonetheless, the poor quality of the tape made it unclear if the victim was indeed Collett. 

Sixty-four-year-old Collett, a freelance journalist, was on an assignment at the time for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency to assess its information activities and to provide information to the international media on potential major stories. 

The Times reported that Safarini said Collett’s killing came as a response to US air strikes against ANO’s ally Libya by bombers flown from British bases. 

Safarini himself took part in the hijacking of a Pan Am jet in Karachi in 1986, in which 22 people died. – The Daily Star