A Letter From Gerry Adams

“The road from the airport through the southern suburbs of Beruit into the city centre ran through fundamentalist Hezbollah terrriotory and was known the world over as ‘Kidnap Highway’. When Brian left the airport to head up that road he had, as his shield, an armed military escort. I had a letter from Gerry Adams.’

In April 1986, during the Lebanese civil war, Brian Keenan, left his home in West Beirut to walk the short distance to American University of Beirut where he taught in the English department. He never made it. He was kidnapped by members of an Islamist militia.
In the weeks and months that followed, his friends in Belfast, drawing on the support of the Irish Republican Movement, put together a plan that they hoped would result in his release. This is the story, told first-hand, of how that plan unfolded- in Ireland and and volatile belly of wartime Beirut.