One Family's Response To Terrorism: A Daughter's Memoir (Contemporary Issues in the Middle East)

ISBN: 081560954X

Author: van de Ven, Susan Kerr

Condition: New

On January 18, 1984, Malcolm Kerr, president of the American University of Beirut and a respected scholar of Middle East politics, was shot in the back of the head as he stepped out of an elevator on his way to work. At the time, the chaos of Lebanons civil war made it impossible to investigate who had carried out the killing and why. Seventeen years later, armed with new information concerning the assassination and supported by the Anti-Terrorism Act passed by Congress in 1996, his family came to a painful consensus that nonviolent justice through the rule of law was a duty they could not ignore. Disturbing revelations emerged as the author explored U.S. government intelligence, U.S. district court records, Malcolm Kerrs unpublished papers, and the recollections of journalists, diplomats, academics, and former Hizballah hostages who lived through the violence of 1980s Lebanon. The familys team of lawyers built a clear case against the Islamic Republic of Iran, culminating in a trial before a judge of the U.S. District Court. One Familys Response to Terrorism: A Daughters Memoir is a stunning portrait of the intimate way in which violence pulls lives apart, of an American family caught on the stage of Middle East politics, and of the moral choices required in seeking justice.