November 24, 2009 - The Daily Star - Lebanon DNA tests confirm Bekaa body belongs to missing UK journalist

DNA tests confirm Bekaa body belongs to missing UK journalist Alec Collett

By Agence France Presse (AFP)

BEIRUT: Forensic tests have confirmed that remains found in eastern Lebanon are those of British reporter Alec Collett who was kidnapped during the country’s civil war, the British embassy said on Monday. “We can confirm that DNA tests show that the remains that were found last week are those of Alec Collett,” embassy spokeswoman Nicola Davis told AFP.

The United Nations was set to transport the reporter’s body home, she added, without giving further details.

British experts working in the Bekaa region of eastern Lebanon recovered the remains, which underwent DNA testing, a Lebanese security source said last week.

Collett, who was 64 at the time, went missing in 1985 and was reported to have been killed a year later.

He was on assignment in refugee camps for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) when taken hostage near Beirut airport.

The Abu Nidal Organisation (ANO), a radical offshoot of the Palestinian movement Fatah, claimed responsibility for the abduction and killing, said to be in response to US air raids on Libya, a funder of the ANO.

In April 1986, a videotape showed the hanging of a hooded man said to be Collett. However, the victim was never officially identified.

The group’s leader Sabri al-Banna, or Abu Nidal, was found shot dead in Baghdad in 2002. – AFP