Word: compounds
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...hostages' stories begin with a previously unpublicized narrative of the heroism of Sergeant James M. Lopez, 22, the lone Marine guard on duty at the consulate building in the U.S. embassy when Iranian militants stormed the compound on Nov. 4, 1979. For nearly three hours, Lopez singlehandedly kept the invaders out of the consulate, primarily by using tear-gas grenades. "At one point, the students tried to break into the consulate through one of the windows, but he beat them back," reported Mark Lijek, 29, a U.S. consular official...
Lopez joined the last group to leave the consulate. They got out of the embassy compound but were captured by a group of militants on a nearby street. When he was finally released last week, Lopez told his parents in Globe, Ariz., that for much of the past 14½ months he had been "kept in some really bad-hole places, like closets," and beaten several times. But he added, "At least I got some of the others out, right...
...Sunday morning demonstration quickly turned into an occupation. Someone with a boltcutter opened a padlocked gate, and the mob flooded into the 27-acre compound. The Americans inside barricaded themselves in the fortified brick chancellery building, and Marine guards there held the doors shut long enough for officials to destroy some secret embassy documents. Then they surrendered and, with the rest of the Americans, were blindfolded and bound. Their captors identified themselves as students whose allegiance was to Khomeini. Their demand was that the Shah be returned to Iran...
...streets outside the embassy, crowds massed each day to howl for the heads of Carter and the Shah. Within the compound the militants settled in for a long occupation, hectoring foreign reporters at press conferences and making a point of hauling garbage wrapped in an American flag. It seemed that they had not decided what to do with the hostages. Simply hold them? Shoot them? Or, as they threatened more often as the days went by, try them as spies...
...inspired cruelty, the militants refused to say how many hostages they held, leaving in doubt whether any Americans had died in the takeover or had been killed since (in fact, there were no deaths). No one outside the embassy was really sure how many staffers had been in the compound when the siege began, and how many had been elsewhere in the city. Chargé d'Affaires Bruce Laingen and two aides had been in the Foreign Ministry on business when the attack began, and they were held there, sinking gradually in status from diplomats to captives. Their number...