Terry Anderson’s Ordeal Described

BOSTON — Terry A. Anderson, the American journalist held hostage in Lebanon for 3 1/2 years, has gone on hunger strikes, smashed his head against his cell until it bled and spends day and night shackled to a bed, the Boston Globe reported Thursday.

Details of Anderson’s captivity were based on interviews with three Americans and one Frenchman who shared his ordeal but have since been freed.

Anderson, 41, was kidnaped March 16, 1985, and is believed held by the Islamic Jihad terrorist group. He does not know that his father and brother have both died of cancer, the former hostages said.

Marcel Fontaine, a French diplomat released May 6, said that after Anderson passed the 1,000-day mark chained by the ankle in a 10-by-10-foot cell, he began pounding his forehead against the plaster until blood flowed.

Fontaine and three freed American hostages said Anderson has undergone hunger strikes in futile attempts to obtain a newspaper and defiantly given his captors a Nazi-like salute.