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Jewish World Review Feb. 15, 2001 / 22 Shevat, 5761

M.E. Sprengelmeyer

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Iran stole American's life, now he wants them to pay

http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- TOM Sutherland donned a blindfold on the witness stand Wednesday, showing a hushed courtroom how he viewed the world during much of his time as a hostage in Beirut - an ordeal lasting more than six years.

The retired Colorado State University professor cracked a few jokes and was mostly upbeat during his U.S. District Court trial seeking reparations from the Iranian government, which allegedly orchestrated his captivity.

But he cried and could barely speak when he talked of being released in 1991, only to learn that his father-in-law, William Murray, had died just 36 hours earlier.

An official told him, "Your wife is not here to meet you. She has gone to her father's funeral," he said, choking back tears.

As the lawsuit contends, Sutherland, 69, missed so much of life while being shuffled from one filthy cell to another. Now he wants to seize frozen Iranian assets in the United States because the outcast nation was believed to have sponsored his abduction.

He testified about being naive when he arrived in Lebanon in 1983 to become a dean at American University of Beirut. It was a chance to see the Holy Land and get some administrative experience.

"All my friends ... said I was crazy to go there in the middle of a war," he said.

Reality did not set in until 1984, when the university president was gunned down in his office. Sutherland was in shock, but determined not to leave. "I didn't think I could go back to Fort Collins and say, 'The (university) president was killed. I was scared.'"

More than a year later, he and his wife, Jean, made a trip to Colorado and then she stayed behind to work on a doctoral thesis. When Sutherland arrived back at the Beirut airport, the airline offered three bodyguards to accompany him on the five-mile trip back to his campus home.

"Tell you what," he joked to his driver, "you be my bodyguard."

Without the bodyguards, the two men drove toward the university. A car swerved and cut them off the road. Then another car arrived, and soon, eight men with machine-guns stepped out. They ordered Sutherland out of his car and sprayed the area with bullets.

Sutherland had his briefcase in his hand before he was shoved into the kidnappers' car. That briefcase, and an article on Islam inside, made the captors think he was with the CIA. It led to years of beatings and other harassment against the mild-mannered Sutherland, an expert in animal husbandry, not espionage.

He was blindfolded and then taken to his first of many dingy, underground holding cells. "That turned out to be the last time I saw the sun for the next 6 1/2 years," he said. At one point in his testimony, Sutherland donned the paisley strip of cloth that covered his eyes when he was finally released in 1991.

Among his cellmates was journalist Terry Anderson, who has already won a $341 million judgment against Iran.

Sutherland recalled that after one brutal beating he tried committing suicide by tying a garbage bag over his head. He started to asphyxiate, but then an image appeared in his mind. It was that of a family photograph of his wife and three daughters back in Colorado.

"When I was on the verge of going, I saw this image and said, 'I can't do that to them,'" he said.

He did not know that Jean was working through diplomatic channels, pressing for his release. One Feb. 14, the guards showed Sutherland a copy of an Islamic newspaper, where she had placed a simple ad for him saying: "Happy Valentine's Day."

More than six years after his capture, he finally talked to his Valentine on the phone.

"I said, 'Hi, Jean.' She said, 'Hi, Tom,'" Sutherland testified, breaking down in tears. "It was fantastic."

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