Remains are U.N. worker missing 24 years

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Nov. 24 (UPI) -- Remains found in eastern Lebanon have been identified as those of a U.N. worker missing for 24 years, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said.

Alec Collett was working as a consultant for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East when he was kidnapped in Lebanon in March 1985 by a group called Revolutionary Organization of Muslim Socialists, CNN reported Tuesday.

"Although he is saddened by Alec Collett's death, (Ban) hopes that the actions taken to find his remains can provide a measure of comfort to his loved ones," Ban's representative said in a statement.

Collett, 63 when he was abducted, was the first U.N. employee kidnapped in Lebanon. He was visiting U.N. relief operations in Lebanon as part of a three-month consultancy.

In April 1986, a Beirut television station received a videotape purportedly showing Collett being hanged, but the United Nations at the time said it was impossible to identify the person in the video conclusively.

Collett, a journalist for 35 years, worked in Prague as a correspondent for several British publications after World War II, and was an Associated Press wire service reporter in New York and at the United Nations.