Awards Ceremony Hosted by John McCarthy
Credit to Anna Mc Carthy
In April 1986, John McCarthy was a 29 year old journalist on his first foreign assignment with Worldwide Television News in Lebanon. On his way to Beirut airport to catch a return flight to London, his car was ambushed and he was kidnapped by Islamic Jihad, a fundamentalist Shi'ite group. There followed a period of five years of incarceration for McCarthy, over four of those with fellow captive Brian Keenan. For most of the time McCarthy and Keenan were chained by wrist and feet and moved frequently to a variety of squalid locations by their captors; men whose behaviour could change without warning from warm expressions of friendliness to wanton violence.
McCarthy was released in August 1991 after 1,943 days in captivity, the longest of any British hostage in Lebanon. Since his release he has returned to writing and broadcasting and is increasingly interested in using the insight he acquired through his experience as a captive in Beirut to help others understand issues such as motivation, communication, team work and plain old courage and will to survive.