WORLD : Hostage’s Anniversary Marked

Family and friends of John McCarthy, the British journalist held by Muslim extremists in Lebanon, marked his fourth anniversary in captivity today with a church service, a media campaign and a protest outside the Iranian Embassy.

The Foreign Office said that it is a “desperately sad anniversary” and that it welcomes recent statements in Iran and Lebanon about the need to release all Western hostages.

McCarthy, 33, was en route to Beirut airport April 17, 1986, after a 32-day assignment in Lebanon with Worldwide Television News when he was abducted by gunmen.

Sympathizers attended a church service, and a group later went to the Iranian Embassy, where they stood in silence, some blindfolded and in chains, to protest the suffering of the captives. Among them was former French hostage Jean-Paul Kauffman.