Sutherland, Thomas (1931–)

Dr. Thomas Sutherland, a Scots-born American professor, was held hostage for nearly six and a half years during the hostage crisis in Lebanon.

Sutherland and his wife, Jean, moved to Beirut in the summer of 1983 to work at the American University, then one of the most prestigious educational institutions in the Middle East. Sutherland, who had taught animal sciences at Colorado University for 26 years, signed a three-year contract as dean of faculty for agriculture and food science; his wife was to teach English at the school. When the Sutherlands arrived to take up their posts, Western staff and professors at American University were already becoming targets of radical Shiite Muslim fundamentalists.

The first of these targets was Malcolm Kerr, president of American University; Kerr was assassinated on January 18, 1984. Professor Frank Reiger was abducted the following month. Concerned for his own safety, but not intimidated, Sutherland remained at the university. More than a year later, on May 28, 1985, radical Shiite gunmen seized David P. Jacobsen, director of the American University hospital. Two weeks later, two cars forced Sutherland's limousine to stop; he was abducted at gunpoint within minutes of his return from the United States.

Sutherland believes his kidnapping was a case of mistaken identity, that the gunmen who seized him were actually seeking American University president Calvin Plimpton, whose limousine Sutherland was using. Regardless, on June 9, 1985, Sutherland became the seventh American and the twelfth Western foreigner to disappear in Lebanon.

Sutherland spent much of his initial time as a hostage in solitary confinement. His captors interpreted a flyer for a conference on basic Islam found in his briefcase as proof that Sutherland was a “spy.” They interrogated him relentlessly. Finally, by the end of the summer, Sutherland was allowed to join the other hostages: Jacobson, Terry Anderson, Rev. Benjamin Weir, and Father Lawrence Martin Jenco. Sutherland was chained to the floor, like the others. Sutherland became extremely depressed, speaking of suffocating himself with a garbage bag. In late 1986, when he was moved to a tiny, solitary, underground cell Sutherland attempted suicide three times. He spent the last portion of his 2,354 days of captivity with Anderson.

Sutherland was freed on November 18, 1991, along with Terry Waite, the Anglican envoy and hostage. Their release, the first following the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages debacle in the United States, marked the beginning of the end of the Lebanon hostage crisis for the United States. Within a month, Anderson, the last [Page 354]American hostage, would be released. (Two German aid workers remained.) Upon release, Sutherland was flown to the Wiesbaden U.S. military base in Germany to be treated for a peptic ulcer, before joining his family in California for his first Thanksgiving in six years.

In 1993, Sutherland traveled to Beirut with NBC and the BBC to shoot a film about his captivity. He was the first hostage to return. In June 2001, following Anderson's $341 million lawsuit the year earlier, the Sutherlands—Thomas, Jean, and their three daughters—won a $353 million judgment against Iran.