Hostage John McCarthy is free after more than five years in captivity
On this day in 1991, the journalist John McCarthy – Britain’s longest-held hostage in Lebanon – was released after more than five years in captivity. The then 29-year-old McCarthy was on his first foreign assignment for United Press International Television News in Beirut when he was taken hostage by the militant group Islamic Jihad. A week earlier, Brian Keenan – an Irishman teaching at the American University of Beirut – had also been kidnapped. After spending two months in isolation, the blindfolded, dishevelled, bearded Keenan was thrown into a cell with McCarthy – whose first words to him were: "F*** me, it's Ben Gunn". The two shared a tiny cell for several years and Keenan would later say of the man who became his closest friend: “He was my strength and my soul mate. Without him I don't think I would have made it." McCarthy’s friends and family – led by his girlfriend, journali...