Word: hizballah
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...when the posting in Lebanon opened, Higgins was anxious to get back to the field. No rule barred an officer with Higgins' top clearances from taking the job. But eight months after his arrival in Lebanon, he was kidnaped by Hizballah gunmen near the port city of Tyre. His captors, who quickly found out that he had worked for Weinberger, charged him with being a spy. In a videotape released a week after the kidnaping, Higgins appeared to have been physically abused...
Even as Higgins was being interrogated, however, the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency were preparing a damage assessment that concluded that information Higgins could give Hizballah was unlikely to harm U.S. security. He did not, for example, know the names of secret agents in the Middle East. No U.S. operations were changed as a result of the kidnaping. "The main danger was to Higgins," says an official familiar with the report. "It was a stupid posting...
...Lieut. Colonel William Higgins, 44, who was kidnaped last year while serving as head of an observer team attached to the U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon. His captors claimed they killed him in retaliation for Israel's seizure of Sheik Abdul Karim Obeid, a presumed leader of Shi'ite Hizballah terrorists, during a raid into southern Lebanon. U.S. officials now believe, however, that Higgins had been dead for some time, then used for his kidnapers' macabre display. No matter which terrible theory turns out to be true, the image of Higgins' body was a brutal reminder that, ten years after...
...between the Israeli and American responses to hostage taking. On July 28, two dozen Israeli commandos staged a daring raid into the southern Lebanese village of Jibchit. Their goal was to seize Obeid, 32, whom the Israelis identify as a spiritual and military leader of the Shi'ite fundamentalist Hizballah (Party of God), a group with close ties to Iran that is holding most of the Western hostages. The Israelis say they wanted Obeid as a bargaining chip to gain release of three Israeli military men taken prisoner in southern Lebanon...
...Obeid out of action, claiming he has instigated dozens of attacks against Israel and the so-called security zone it maintains in Lebanon. But kidnaping is not the usual method of the Israelis. They may actually have wanted to acquire bait for a hostage swap. Two affiliate groups of Hizballah are believed to be holding three Israeli prisoners of war captured in 1986, two of them soldiers taken in the security zone and the third an air force navigator. Americans wonder if U.S. Lieut. Colonel William Higgins, head of the United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon, who was seized...