At the end of the eighties, Beirut was known as the "Mecca of kidnappers". In my building on Comodore Street, then called the Saad Building, two neighbors, Roger Auque, on the second floor, and Charles Grass, on the fifth floor, the first French and the second British, were held hostage by pro-Iranian Palestinian terrorist groups who camped in their air in that dangerous and lawless west of Beirut.
The abductions of Western citizens were carried out mainly on the airport road, close to the Shiite suburbs, held by Hizbullah, and in some places in the Muslim area such as pubs and restaurants frequented by foreigners. His goal was then primarily political. It was about getting, as one of the prices of the liberation, the governments of the Western powers such as the USA, Great Britain or France to stop arming the army of Saddam Hussein, then an ally of the West in the war with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Kidnapping was easy in west Beirut. To pronounce the name of the Mugnie family was almost terrifying, for one of its prominent members was the mastermind of this then common political practice. There were, however, some rules. Like for example, he never kidnapped women.
A handful of foreigners were then living west of Beirut. The terror displaced embassies, international information agencies, press correspondents who had to move to the safer Christian area. After the kidnapping of my neighbors, the management of my newspaper and my friend, Ambassador Pedro de Aristegui, begged me to leave the flat. I lived as a refugee for a few weeks in the residence of the Spanish embassy. I was the last Spaniard who, in the spring of 1986, in the midst of growing threats, left my neighborhood of Hamra. In any case, since Spain was not involved in international intrigues in the Middle East, there were fewer dangers than those suffered by other Western residents.
But shortly after, Ambassador Aristegui, two officials of the diplomatic representation, the Assad brothers and a policeman were taken hostage by the clan of the Rahal family, who had kidnapped them to obtain the freedom of one of their relatives, who had attempted against Gaddafi's Libyan embassy in Madrid. Mohamad Rahal visited me to warn Aristegui of his imminent kidnapping if his relative was not released. He was a kind young man, of good stature.
Most of the hostages, despite haggling and negotiations in which the Baathist regime in Damascus of Hafez al-Assad was somehow always present, got out alive. And although there were some victims, like the journalist Alec Colette, they regained their freedom. The dean of the kidnapped was Terry Anderson, director of the Associated Press office, which was located right around the corner from my house.
The government of Iran directed and financed the kidnapping, but there were several groups with different local capitostos with whom it was necessary to negotiate at the time of the great political and monetary haggling. States always denied that they had to pay ransoms, and it was never easy to know what the price had been.
Later there were new cases of kidnappings of Westerners, among them, a group of Spanish journalists in the wars in Syria and Iraq at the hands of radical Islamic groups. The United States government refused to pay the ransoms they demanded for their hostages, who were mercilessly killed.
My neighbor Roger Auque wrote in Hostage in Beirut that for the guerrillas who captured him it was a way to make a living. And the emphatic phrases against imperialism, against the Great American and French Satan, about the fight against Israel, left them a little perplexed. "I - said one of the men watching him - don't give a damn about the politics of the Middle East, what I want is to travel, go abroad, marry a beautiful woman, have a house and a job".
I remember during those years the hasty entry of the ordinances of the France Presse Agency into the Beirut newsroom with the announcements of the release of hostages. The local Arab victims of Islamic terrorism and kidnapping have always been forgotten. They are a plague on these towns and are not only of a political or ideological nature, but of a crematistic nature.
At that time I published a chronicle entitled No, they will not kidnap me. "I walk briskly with books and newspapers in hand. I always pass the same place, I see the same faces. Some street vendors offer me contraband tobacco or incredible bouquets of dried flowers. Sometimes fear shakes my heart for a few moments. When I see the lights on in my house I feel safe. No, they won't kidnap me."
