Steen, Alann (1940–)

Alann Steen, a professor of journalism at Beirut University College, was one of the last American hostages to be released in Lebanon.

Steen was abducted during the series of kidnappings of Western foreigners that followed Terry Waite's final trip to Beirut. Waite, the Anglican envoy and hostage negotiator, had been sent to Lebanon to secure the release of several Western hostages. Steen's was the tenth kidnapping in two weeks.

On January 24, 1987, a Saturday afternoon, gunmen dressed in the olive-colored uniforms of the Lebanese police carried out a mass kidnapping on the Beirut University College campus. Four gunmen drove into the campus in a Nissan patrol jeep, claiming to have been assigned to provide protection for all foreign professors. Once inside, they asked the university staff to congregate in the ground floor of the living quarters. Steen, along with three others—Jesse Turner, a professor of math and computer science, Robert Polhill, a business studies professor, and Mithileshwar Singh, an Indian business professor with an American passport—were taken at gunpoint. Female professors and university staff were not abducted.

Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine, a group associated with Hezbollah, claimed responsibility for the kidnappings. (Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine was considered separate from Islamic Jihad, the extremist group that had kidnapped other Americans to be used as bargaining chips for the release of 17 Iraqi and Lebanese prisoners in Kuwait.) Investigators later found that Imad Mughniyah and Abdel Hadi had orchestrated the mass kidnapping, bribing the police and other guards.

In the weeks following Steen's abduction, Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine repeatedly threatened to execute Steen and the others unless 400 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel were released. Steen's photograph often accompanied such statements, which were delivered to one of the Western news agencies in Beirut and to the Beirut paper, an-Nahar. He was also used to deliver a six-minute statement on videotape, released in late February. In the statement, deemed the captives' “last message,” Steen, unshaven and weary, announced that he, Polhill, Turner, and Singh would be executed at midnight unless the Palestinian prisoners in Israel were released. Hours before the deadline, the Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine released a written statement reiterating the threat. However, at midnight, the kidnappers, citing the televised pleas of the hostages' wives, abandoned their execution plans. Later that week, the Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine again issued threats against the Prisoners' lives, saying they would be murdered as revenge on the defenders of Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses. The kidnappers did not follow through on these threats.

According to fellow hostage Terry Anderson, Steen did not fare well in the hands of his kidnappers. Steen was falsely identified by his kidnappers as a “spy” and was beaten severely, including repeated kicks to the head that left him with brain injuries and periodic convulsions. The kidnappers finally called in a Hezbollah doctor to prescribe medicine to keep him alive.

Steen was released on December 3, 1991, and driven to Damascus, Syria, where previous American hostages had been released to U.S. authorities. The White House thanked the U.N. secretary general, and the governments of Iran, Syria, and Lebanon for Steen's release, which came just one day after Joseph Cicippio, abducted in September 1986, was freed. Terry Anderson, the last American hostage, would be freed the following day, December 4, marking the end of the Lebanon hostage crisis for Americans.