Brian Keenan prayed for his own death while held hostage in Lebanon in the late 1980s, a new documentary on his ordeal reveals. Keenan, from Belfast, was kidnapped by Islamic Jihad militia in the Muslim-controlled area of west Beirut as he made his way to the American University, where he worked as an English teacher in April 1986. He was held for four and a half years at the height of the country’s bloody civil war and often tortured and beaten before his release in August 1990.In a new BBC documentary to be screened tomorrow night, which follows his emotional return to Beirut for the first time since his release, he reveals the crippling mental effect captivity had on him. ‘‘Sleeping in the smell of my own filth, many times I thought of death, looked for it, prayed for it and asked for it,” he said.
While filming, he also visited a number of parts of south Lebanon ravaged by the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel, including Qana, where 28 people, including women and children, were killed in one attack. ‘‘Qana is the place where Jesus turned water into wine, but these days it is the place where high explosives turn children into ashes,” he said.
Despite this, he said he felt a sense of release on this return visit. ‘‘I didn’t come to Beirut to be a hostage. It has taken away the dross that has been hanging around for 20 years.” Keenan’s wife Audrey and his two young sons, Cal and Jack, also travelled with him. ‘‘My sons know bad things happened to daddy here, but I didn’t want them to grow up with that nightmare.”