Americans Lebanon

The Bush Administration demanded Wednesday that the remains of two Americans who died in captivity in Lebanon be returned and flatly denied promising Muslim terrorists that it would not attempt to punish them for the abduction or murder of American hostages. During a briefing at the White House, presidential Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater insisted that there were "no deals" and "no quid pro quos " in connection with the return of all American hostages from Lebanon.

Nine years after the first American was grabbed off the anarchic streets of Beirut, the release of journalist Terry A. Anderson on Wednesday marked the end of an era that held the country captive and converted the yellow ribbon into a national symbol as familiar as baseball and apple pie. And U.S.

Terry A. Anderson prided himself on being a quick study when it came to the Byzantine world of Middle Eastern politics. And when three well-armed men snatched him off a Beirut street on a bright Saturday morning 2,455 days ago, the Associated Press' chief Middle East correspondent instantly realized that he had badly miscalculated. "Terry had the look of a man who knew he was doomed," recalled AP photographer Don Mell, who was with Anderson but was not abducted by the Islamic Jihad kidnapers.

Terry A. Anderson, the last American hostage in Lebanon, finally became a free man again Wednesday, closing the door on a dark and painful chapter for himself and his country. Held for more than 6 1/2 years in captivity, deprived of family and friends, denied all but the simplest necessities, an innocent victim of the hatreds of the Middle East, Anderson said he left his militant captors in Beirut with a single word: "Goodby."

As a U.S. military hospital here waited to welcome Terry A. Anderson, the last American held captive in Lebanon, physicians Wednesday delivered a troubling medical report on one of the two Americans freed earlier this week. Air Force Col. Uwe Fohlmeister, director of hospital services at the Wiesbaden Medical Center, reported that the newly released hostage Alann Steen had sustained slight but permanent brain damage from a beating he received from his captors roughly four years ago.

Former hostage Thomas M. Sutherland said Wednesday he tried to kill himself three times while in captivity in Lebanon, but each time the vision of his wife and daughters kept him from going through with it. The suicide attempts came in late 1986, when Sutherland's captors in Beirut isolated him in a tiny, dark underground cell. The captors "wouldn't even give me a candle to eat by.

Alann Steen had been at Beirut University College only a few days in the fall of 1983 when he spotted another new arrival looking lost and forlorn on the front steps. "My luggage hadn't arrived. I was a mess. I felt like I wanted to cry," Virginia Steen recalled in an interview last year, describing that first meeting with the man who would become her husband. "It was so nice to see another friendly American face."

Terry A. Anderson was released Wednesday after more than six years and nine months in captivity, Iran's official news agency said, ending an agonizing and frustrating seven-year hostage ordeal for the United States. Earlier, Alann Steen, 52, who had been kidnaped in January, 1987, was freed. Anderson, chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press, was held in Lebanon by Shiite Muslim extremists longer than any other Westerner.

Grinning broadly and giddy with excitement, Alann Steen, journalism professor and longtime hostage, was freed by his kidnapers in Lebanon on Tuesday, then met the press and delivered a twist on his lessons. "It's always been said in journalism classes that a journalist covers the news but never makes it," he said in a press conference in Damascus, Syria. "I'm happy to make it today." Coming on a rainy day 24 hours after the release of hostage Joseph J.

Jackie Scardino got married in 1988, but there was no father to walk her down the aisle. Her son, Jordan, was born on Valentine's Day the next year, but there was no grandfather to welcome him into the world. Her sister, Becky Monday, also was married and gave birth to a son--but those milestones also passed while Alann Steen was chained to a wall in Beirut.