Michel Seurat was a sociologist and researcher at the

CNRS The French National Centre for Scientific Research (french: link=no, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 ...

, born 14 August 1947 in Tunisia and died in Beirut in 1986. He was kidnapped on 22 May 1985, in Lebanon, by the

Islamic Jihad Organization The Islamic Jihad Organization – IJO ( ar, حركة الجهاد الإسلامي, Ḥarakat al-Jihād al-'Islāmiyy) or ''Organisation du Jihad Islamique'' (OJI) in French, but best known as "Islamic Jihad" (Arabic: ''Jihad al-Islami'') for ...

, a Lebanese terrorist organization that was the precursor to

Hezbollah Hezbollah (; ar, حزب الله ', , also transliterated Hizbullah or Hizballah, among others) is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and militant group, led by its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah since 1992. Hezbollah's parami ...

. Unlike his cellmate

Jean-Paul Kauffmann Jean-Paul Kauffmann (8 August 1944, Saint-Pierre-la-Cour, Mayenne) is a French journalist and writer, a former student of the École supérieure de journalisme de Lille (40th class). Biography His great-grandfather Michel Kauffmann left Alsace ...

, also kidnapped the same day, he was not released. On 5 March 1986 Islamic Jihad stated that it had executed Seurat; however, his fellow hostages revealed on their release that Seurat had died of hepatitis. In October 2005, the remains of Michel Seurat were found in the southern suburbs of

Beirut Beirut, french: Beyrouth is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, which makes it the third-largest city in the Levant region. The city is situated on a peninsula at the midpoint o ...

by construction workers, and were formally identified after DNA testing. Remains of French hostage found near Beirut
''The New York Times''. The New York Times Company, 6 Mar. 2006. Web. 21 Mar. 2014. His wife is the Syrian novelist

Marie Seurat Marie Maamar Seurat (née. Bachi, 26 January 1949) is a Syrian novelist. Life Marie Maamar Bachi was born on 26 January 1949 in Aleppo. Her father was a farmer. From 1965 she studied graphic arts at Oxford and then she moved to the United States. ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Seurat, Michel Hostages People murdered in Lebanon 1947 births 1986 deaths