Thomas Sutherland, who has died aged 85, was a Scottish-born American academic and dean of agriculture at the American University of Beirut when in 1985 he was kidnapped by Iranian-backed Hizbollah militants in Lebanon and held for more than six years.
Sutherland was among dozens of Westerners taken hostage in Beirut in the 1980s at the height of Lebanon’s civil war. He was abducted while driving from the airport to his home in Beirut on June 9 1985.
For the next six years he was held in a series of dark rooms, often blindfolded and chained to a wall, along with other Western hostages, notably the journalist Terry Anderson, the BBC reporter John McCarthy and the Archbishop of Canterbury’s peace envoy Terry Waite, who had become involved in hostage negotiation, but was himself taken hostage in 1987.
In the early days of their ordeal, the Western hostages were regularly abused by their captors and Sutherland later admitted that he had contemplated suicide more than once. What had kept him alive was his friendship with Anderson, a war correspondent and Vietnam veteran.
To cope with the boredom, Sutherland gave Anderson lessons in French and animal husbandry while Anderson taught Sutherland how to play chess and bridge. “If it hadn’t been for Terry, I probably would have committed suicide,” he said after his eventual release. “Every time I got discouraged and put my head down on the pillow and said, 'I’m done with all this’, Terry encouraged me, and that’s the reason I am alive today.”
His views on Terry Waite, to whom he was shackled for more than a year, were less positive. After the two men were released on November 18 1991, under a deal brokered by the UN, Sutherland shocked a Washington conference with a bitter attack on the Church of England envoy, admitting that he had come “near to blows” with Waite on several occasions.
“He seemed to lack sensitivity and did not know when we wanted silence,” he explained. “He was afraid he would get abrupt replies from Anderson and McCarthy so he picked on me to talk to. He is a super-egoist. I’m convinced he negotiated for hostages for the publicity value.” Waite, he also told Time magazine, had been the “bane” of the captives’ existence and when he moved, “it was like a goddam herd of elephants”.
The son of a Scottish dairy farmer, Thomas McNee Sutherland was born at Falkirk on May 3 1931 and educated at Falkirk High School, where he was a talented footballer. After leaving school, he signed for Rangers while reading Agriculture at Glasgow University, but eventually decided to stick to his studies.
After graduating in 1953, he travelled to America where he took a PhD in animal science from Iowa State University. He then joined the agriculture faculty at Colorado State University, where he became a professor of animal genetics.
In 1983 he took leave of absence to go to Lebanon to help to set up a new teaching department at the American University of Beirut. He was taken hostage two years later.
After his release, Sutherland returned to his job at Colorado State University, where he became professor emeritus after his retirement.
In 2001 members of the Sutherland family were awarded substantial sums in compensation by an American court from frozen Iranian assets over Iran’s role in financing Hizbollah, including more than $23 million for Sutherland himself, most of which he gave away to charity. He and his wife also wrote a joint memoir about their time in the Middle East called At Your Own Risk.
Sutherland is survived by his wife Jean and by three daughters.
Thomas Sutherland, born May 3 1931, died July 23 2016
