Search for Remains of British Journalist Continues
British experts are still searching for the body of journalist Alec Collett, who was kidnapped and killed 25 years ago at the height of Lebanon”s civil war, a security source said.
"A nine-member team headed by Lieutenant Colonel Giles Taylor is working to recover the body of British journalist Alec Collett in the eastern Bekaa valley," the source told Agence France Presse.
"The team is made of specialists with military and intelligence backgrounds. Their mission is expected to take a week," the source said Monday, adding the search was being conducted outside the eastern town of Aita al-Fakhar amid tight security.
The British diplomatic mission in Beirut confirmed the search was under way.
"The British embassy in cooperation with the United Nations is involved in a humanitarian mission to recover and return the remains of a British national who disappeared in Lebanon in 1985 while working for the United Nations," a spokesman told AFP, but refused to give further details.
An AFP correspondent said journalists were not allowed near the site in eastern Bekaa, which was a stronghold for armed Palestinian groups at the onset of Lebanon”s 1975-1990 civil war.
Collett went missing in 1985 and was reported to have been killed a year later.
Sixty-four years old at the time, he was on assignment in refugee camps for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) near Beirut airport when taken hostage.
The Abu Nidal Organization (ANO), an offshoot of the Palestinian Fatah Movement, claimed responsibility for the abduction and killing.