Men killed for vengeance

Press, 19 April 1986, Page 10

Men killed for vengeance

NZPA-AP Beirut Three kidnapped Britons were shot at close range and dumped near a mountain highway with a note saying they were killed because Britain had co-operated with American air raids on Libya. Another Briton was abducted in an area controlled by Shi’ite Muslims soon after the bodies were found yesterday in the mountainous central Lebanon. A previously unknown group claimed responsibility. John Rowan, first secretary of the Irish Embassy in Beirut, identified the victims as Philip Padfield, aged 40; Alec Collett, aged 64; and Leigh Douglas, aged 34. Messrs Padfield and Douglas were

teachers and Collett was a journalist. But late yesterday, there was confusion about whether Collett had been killed.

In Washington, Larry Speakes, a White House spokesman, said the victims were two Britons and an Irishman, but he gave no names.

In London, a British Foreign Office spokeswoman, Sue Jones, said that officials had not been able to confirm the identity of the third victim. “We still have not had definite identification ...

and there are four people missing,” she said.

Ms Jones said the fourth missing person, Brian Keenan, who had dual Irish-British nationality, worked at the Ameri-

can University in Beirut and was kidnapped on April 11. Mr Keenan could be the third victim rather than Collett, she said.

Asked about other news reports that Collett had been hanged in a separate killing, Ms Jones said, “I checked with our emergency department and they don’t have any news on that at all.”

Collett, who was based in New York and was on a writing assignment for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees, was seized in southern Lebanon on March 25, 1985.

Reuter reports from Los Angeles that his son said yesterday he held President Reagan and the Brit-

ish Prime Minister, Mrs Margaret Thatcher, responsible for the apparent execution of his father in Lebanon.

“They are no better than murderers themselves for this act of treachery,” said David Collett, aged 27.

David Collett has lived in the United States since 1983. He condemned Mr Reagan for allowing American planes to bomb Libya and criticised Mrs Thatcher for agreeing to the planes’ taking off from British bases. Mr Padfield, the director of an international language centre, and Mr Douglas, a political science professor at the American University, were abducted on March 28 in Muslim west Beirut.

The bodies were found soon after an anonymous caller claiming to speak for the Arab Revolutionary Cells said the group had killed them to avenge the air raids.

Knowledgeable Palestinian sources say the Arab Revolutionary Cells is linked to the renegade Palestinian terrorist leader, Abu Nidal, whom the United States says is harboured by the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gadaffi.

Gunmen kidnapped a British television cameraman, John McCarthy, aged 29, and his Lebanese driver soon after the bodies were found. Their car was stopped on the highway that leads to the airport through west and south Beirut.