Word: ordeal
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...through his emotions until the last second of captivity. Driven to an empty field, Kauffmann was joined there by Carton and Fontaine. Arriving a few minutes later at a hotel in Beirut, Kauffmann heard a French voice shout, "French intelligence services! Clear the way, for God's sake!" The ordeal was finally over...
...Beirut the ordeal of the three French hostages ended as abruptly as it had begun. Last Wednesday evening a Mercedes roared up to the Summerland Hotel, carrying Diplomats Marcel Carton and Marcel Fontaine and Journalist Jean-Paul Kauffmann, who had been held captive since 1985. Syrian security forces hustled the men to Beirut International Airport, and by the next morning they arrived in Paris for a joyous reunion with their families...
Despite their ordeal, all the hostages were found to be sufficiently fit to travel home to Kuwait. Kuwaiti officials privately claimed that the freeing of the captives was a vindication of their country's principled refusal to accede to the hijackers' chief demand, the release of 17 pro-Iranian terrorists convicted of taking part in attacks on the U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait in 1983. But the hijackers' safe passage out of Algeria not only prevents them from being brought to justice for killing two passengers in Larnaca but also frees them to commit terror anew...
...ordeal had already lasted ten days when the door of Kuwait Airways Flight 422 swung open at Houari Boumedienne Airport in Algiers. Out stepped a frail- looking man, as a caravan of ambulances, police cars and fire trucks stood by below. After being led down the ramp by a doctor -- and a hooded gunman who quickly ran back inside -- Djuma Abdallah Shatti, a 55-year-old Kuwaiti, told of harsh conditions inside the blue-and-white Boeing 747. "Praise be to God, I am fine," said Shatti, who is diabetic, "but they had me tied up all the time...
...doubts about the brutal determination of Shatti's tormentors evaporated as the ordeal of Flight 422 stretched into its second week and gained distinction as the longest uninterrupted skyjacking ever.* After the airliner, en route from Bangkok to Kuwait, was seized on April 5 as it neared the Strait of Hormuz, it began a tortured 3,200-mile journey that took it from Mashhad in northeastern Iran to Larnaca, Cyprus, and finally to Algiers. Deadlines came and went as the skyjackers, having already killed two hostages, threatened the lives of the rest if Kuwait did not meet their demand...