Brian Keenan, a Belfast man teaching at the American University in Beirut, hit the headlines in 1986 when he was abducted by gunmen representing Islamic Jihad, an element of the Hezbollah organisation. Over the course of the Lebanon hostage crisis, which lasted a full ten years from 1982 to 1992, over 100 foreigners were taken into captivity to be used as leverage against the USA and its allies.