50 1GM Friday July 31 2020 | the times
Register
5
On the morning of Wednesday April
30, 1980, Mustapha Karkouti was at the
Iranian embassy in London for a meet-
ing with the cultural and press attachés.
He had been planning to visit Tehran to
report on the aftermath of the previous
year’s Iranian revolution for As-Safir,
the Beirut newspaper for which he was
London correspondent.
“Two minutes into the meeting there
was a commotion,” he later recalled. “I
came out and everyone was rushing up-
stairs, so I followed them into this room.
I heard a conversation in Arabic, ‘Don’t
let him escape’, and knew immediately
it was a hostage situation.”
He then heard gunfire coming from
downstairs. “I was terrified,” he said.
“My heart started beating ten times the
normal speed and my hosts simply ran
out and left me there. I didn’t know
what to do.”
The six gunmen were separatists
from southwest Iran and were demand-
ing the release of 91 comrades held in
Iranian jails. They soon realised that
Karkouti spoke both English and Ara-
bic fluently, as well as some Farsi. Re-
peatedly he was called on to translate
for them, the 26 hostages and the Brit-
ish security forces outside. “I was the
go-between. I was most of the time at
the window with a gun behind my neck
conveying the message of the gunmen.”
He later described the hostage-tak-
ers as “a bunch of amateurs”, adding
that he and his fellow hostages even
managed to keep open a phone line.
This meant that he and Chris Cramer
from the BBC, who with his colleague
Sim Harris had been at the embassy to
apply for a visa, were able to file reports
to the outside world, including the gun-
men’s demands.
As deadlines came and went, stress
levels inside the embassy rose. Karkouti
tried to explain British law to Oan Ali
Mohammed, known as Salim, the gun-
men’s leader. By the fifth day Abbas
Lavasani, the press attaché whom
Karkouti had been there to meet, was
becoming agitated and insulting the
gunmen in Farsi; they were threatening
to kill him. “I don’t claim to be a coura-
geous person, but at that moment I
Before long he had met Faten Oma-
ry, a Syrian teacher who opened an Ar-
abic school in London. They were mar-
ried in 1978 and she survives him with
their daughter, Shahla, who set up the
Syrian Supper Collective in London to
support refugees, and two sons, Ah-
mad, a software developer, and Talal, a
comedian and actor.
Karkouti, who was secular in his
views, became a flamboyant fixture on
the London media scene, where he was
known for his walrus moustache, love of
whisky and large cigars. He spent four
years as president of the Foreign Press
Association and served as a member of
Chatham House council.
He made several appearances dis-
cussing Middle East politics on Dateline
London, the political discussion show
on BBC News, and after the 9/11 terror-
ist attacks on the US he was the go-tooperation, often for hours as the
surgeon strove to save a life.
Joan Olivia Elsie Moriarty was born
in Cheshire in 1923, the daughter of
Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver Moriarty of
the Royal Artillery. She accompanied
her parents to India and enjoyed the
outdoor life, riding her pony alone in
the countryside. However, her child-
hood was marred by a motor accident
in which she was seriously injured and
she carried a scar on her chin for life.man for many London-based editors
trying to grasp the significance of those
events. “He distilled complexity into
simple terms,” one colleague explained.
Some years after the embassy siege
Karkouti left journalism and spent a
year working for the UN Relief and
Works Agency for Palestine Refugees
in Amman. There he met Sheikh Nahy-
an bin Mubarak al-Nahyan and moved
to the United Arab Emirates as the
sheikh’s adviser.
He returned to west London in 2014,
settling in Ealing and contributing to
debates in Gulf News on topics such as
President Erdogan’s reshaping of
modern Turkey, Iran’s ties to Russia and
the banning of burkinis in France, a
subject he observed from his summer
apartment overlooking the beach inCannes. While many celebrated the
Arab Spring and the overthrow of Mub-
arak in Egypt and Gaddafi in Libya,
Karkouti, always a calm and steady
voice, was cautious about the prospects
for regime change in his native Syria.
“From deep personal experience he un-
derstood the complexities of that coun-
try and how the Assad family would
deal with an uprising,” one tribute in
The National said. “His predictions of
an unprecedentedly vicious war were
sadly correct.”
Looking back on the Iranian embas-
sy siege, Karkouti recalled how young,
inexperienced and nervous the gun-
men had been. “They didn’t know
London’s long history of fighting terror-
ism, didn’t know about the IRA,” he
said. “They even thought British police
duties were civil, like helping old ladies
across the street. If I am ever taken hos-
tage again, I hope to God to be taken by
professionals — much less stress.”Mustapha Karkouti, journalist, was born
on October 3, 1944. He died from a heart
attack on July 16, 2020, aged 76‘I was at the window
with a gun at my neck
conveying messages’
Mustapha Karkouti
Syrian-born journalist and commentator based in London who became caught up in the Iranian embassy siege of 1980
GETTY IMAGESBrigadier Joan Moriarty
Redoubtable but kindly matron-in-chief of the army who once made a convincing Florence Nightingale in a military tattoo
Soldiers wounded in the Malayan anti-
communist terrorist campaign or ill in
hospital with malaria would not have
minded being woken for a pulse check
by the young Nurse Moriarty, but she
would be quick to stop any of the usual
banter about them dreaming of her.
A striking-looking woman, she was
chosen to act the part of Florence
Nightingale at the Searchlight Tattoo
in aid of the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen
and Families Association (SSAFA) at
White City, London, in 1954, appearing
in the Russian travelling carriage used
by Nightingale at Scutari (near
modern-day Istanbul) during the Cri-
mean War.
As a trainee nurse at St Thomas’
Hospital, London, in 1942 she was
responsible for a patient who was too ill
to be moved to the shelter at the onset
of a German air raid, so she crouched
under his bed and talked to him quietly
until the raid was over.
On qualification as a state-registered
nurse she joined the Queen Alexan-
dra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service
(later renamed Queen Alexandra’s
Royal Army Nursing Corps or Qaranc)
in 1947 and was posted to the Royal
Victoria Hospital, Netley, on South-
ampton Water. Until its closure in 1978,
this was designated for recuperation
and the centre for military psychiatry
medicine, both specialities to which she
was temperamentally suited.
Moriarty was granted a regular com-
mission in 1950. Her first station abroad
was with the British Military Hospital
(BMH) Gibraltar but her clear potential
for senior rank took her first to Hind-
head, Surrey, where she worked as an
instructor at the Queen Alexandra
training establishment, then in 1955 to
her first staff appointment in the War
Office Medical Directorate.
On her arrival in Malaya in 1958, the
country was in the final throes of the
communist insurgency begun ten years
earlier. The extraction of combat
casualties from the jungle in time to
prevent gangrene was a constant
concern, time from being wounded to
the operating table would take several
hours unless a helicopter landing zone
could be cut quickly in the jungle. Mori-
arty worked at BMH Singapore, then in
the Cameron Highlands, where the in-
jured were sent to recuperate in a cooler
climate, and in the military hospital in
Kluang, north-central Johor.
Her active service in Malaya deter-
mined her resolve to specialise in
operating-theatre nursing. She would
recall the thrill of being called in the
middle of the night to attend an urgentShe never spoke of precisely what led
her to choose nursing as a career but,
once resolved, she never looked back.
In her later career in the mid-1960s
Moriarty was posted to Cyprus at BMH
Dhekelia in the Eastern Sovereign Base
Area. Although the EOKA Greek-Cyp-
riot terrorist campaign was over, the
establishment of the United Nations
Force in 1964 to deal with violence
between the Greek and Turkish Cypri-
ot communities in the island placed a
significant extra burden on the British
military establishment. The UN force
had only rudimentary medical facilities
and was dependent on BMH Dhekelia,
where Moriarty found the Austrian,
Canadian, Danish, Finnish, Irish and
Swedish soldiers entertaining, the Irish
immediately recognising her heritage.
Moriarty was appointed deputy
matron of the Military Hospital,
Colchester, in 1967 and on promotion to
lieutenant-colonel in 1970 joined the
Army School of Recruiting as the
Qaranc liaison officer.
In 1973 she become assistant director
of Army Nursing Services for North
East District and Scotland and matron
of the Military Hospital Catterick,
North Yorkshire. She was appointed
commandant to the Qaranc Training
Centre in Aldershot in 1976, the yearbefore she was awarded the Royal Red
Cross for her outstanding services to
military nursing.
Moriarty was promoted brigadier to
become matron-in-chief (army) and
director of Army Nursing Services in- After her retirement in 1979, she
lived in Farnham, Surrey, and kept in
close contact with her corps. She
enjoyed riding in the Hampshire
countryside until late into her life.
Remarkably for such a resolute
woman she had deep reservations
about flying in helicopters, which
appeared to her as fundamentally
unsafe. While matron-in-chief she had
occasion to visit British forces in the
Arabian Gulf, where she was offered a
spectacular flight over the confluence
of the Tigris and Euphrates at the head
of the Shatt al-Arab river. While
quaking inwardly, she accepted and
afterwards described the experience as
one of the most exhilarating of her life.
Brigadier Joan Moriarty, CB, RRC,
matron-in-chief and director of Army
Nursing Services 1977-1980, was born on
May 11, 1923. She died on July 19, 2020
aged 97Moriarty served in Malaya and Cyprus
Mustapha Karkouti was one of 26 hostages held in the siege
jumped on Lavasani and threw him to
the floor,” Karkouti recalled, adding
that PC Trevor Lock, another hostage
who was later awarded the George
Medal, hit Lavasani in the face to
silence him.
As the day drew on, Karkouti became
feverish. Eventually he was freed by
Salim and taken to hospital, where the
following day, May 5, he watched the
rest of the siege on television, including
the moment when a body was thrown
outside the embassy door. “I knew im-
mediately it was Lavasani,” he said.
Soon afterwards he was visited by offi-
cers wanting to check the layout of the
embassy and his knowledge of the gun-
men’s weapons. “Twenty minutes later
we saw the famous storming,” he said,
recalling the SAS operation.
Only one of the six gunmen, Fowzi
Badavi Nejad, survived and was jailed
for life. In 1991 he wrote to Karkouti
asking for forgiveness, but the
former hostage chose not
to reply. Twice in subse-
quent years Karkouti
was approached by
representatives of a
“Free Nejad cam-
paign” asking for
support. The
second time he
agreed, although
he insisted that he
could not forgive.
Nejad was released in
November 2008, with
Karkouti concluding: “It
is time that Nejad proves to
himself the lesson he learnt from
his 28 years’ imprisonment.”
Nevertheless, Karkouti remained
scarred by the events of those few days
in 1980, as he told the BBC World Ser-
vice in 2015. “It has changed my life. It
has changed my personal relations, and
everything,” he said. He kept in touch
with some of the hostages. “The bond
created under these circumstances,
you can’t imagine how powerful and
strong it is.”
Mustapha Karkouti was born in 1944,
although his passport said 1943 because
his mother changed the year to get bet-ter wartime ra-
tions. He was one
of seven children of
a grocery store own-
er from Latakia,
northern Syria, where in
his teens Mustapha became
involved in student politics.
During the 1963 coup that brought the
Baath party to power he was arrested,
imprisoned and tortured. After being
freed he was warned to leave the coun-
try. He made his way to Beirut, studied
at university in Lebanon and, after a
visit to London for the 1966 World Cup
final, “sneaked into journalism”.
In 1974 he was a founding member of
As-Safir (The Ambassador), a popular
left-wing Arabic newspaper in Leba-
non, and was posted to London. “I can’t
describe the excitement I felt when my
plane landed,” he recalled.M
ess, but the
ose not
bse-
uti
yn
ith
g: “It
roves to
e learnt from
onment”te
tio
ofs
a gro
er
norther
hhhhis teens M
iiinvolved in s
During the 1963 coupt