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Photographer Claude Salhani lined the civil warfare in Lebanon for UPI in 1980. Photograph courtesy of Saleh Rifai
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Aug. 22 (UPI) — Claude Salhani, a former photographer, author and editor with United Press Worldwide who lined Lebanon’s civil warfare and plenty of different turbulent occasions within the Center East, has died at age 70.
Salhani’s journey and keenness for information began at age of 18 in 1970, when he joined Lebanon’s main An Nahar newspaper as a photographer. On the time, Lebanon was nonetheless a peaceable and affluent place, however not for lengthy.
That 12 months, clashes broke out between the Jordanian Military and Palestinian guerrillas in Jordan that grew to become often called “Black September.” It was Salhani’s first “actual” task, adopted by many others: the 1973 Arab-Israeli Warfare, the Lebanese Civil Warfare that broke out in 1975, the Turkish Invasion of Cyprus, the Dhofar (Oman) warfare, the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran Warfare, the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the 1990-91 invasion of Kuwait and Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution in 1989.
He additionally witnessed the collapse of communism in Budapest and Moscow.
In 1973, Salhani joined the French photograph company Sygma and began taking assignments from Time and Newsweek. In 1981, he moved to UPI as head of its photograph division in Beirut.
Overlaying the Israeli invasion of Lebanon a 12 months later was in all probability the toughest. At some point, a 155mm Israeli heavy artillery shell hit the Reuters constructing in Beirut whereas Salhani was inside. It took him some time to understand that he escaped with solely a sprained ankle.
On one other event, Salhani was briefly detained by a Palestinian splinter group in Beirut. He was launched due to PLO chief Yasser Arafat.
Though his protection of the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marines headquarters in Beirut led to his nomination for a Pulitzer Prize, Salhani had sufficient. He determined to go away Beirut in 1984 and moved to Brussels, then London and Paris earlier than returning to Washington in 1992.
To many photographers who knew him or labored with him in Beirut, Salhani was “totally different.”
“He needed the photographers to excel of their work and attain larger ranges, particularly the younger ones,” Jamal Saidi, former chief photographer at Reuters, advised UPI. “He revered and appreciated them, serving to them in each potential strategy to safe their rights and take credit score for his or her work.”
When he rejoined UPI in 2000 as worldwide editor, Salhani seized the event of Beirut internet hosting the Francophonie summit a 12 months later to return to his house nation and canopy the particular occasion that helped put Lebanon again on the worldwide map. Rediscovering post-war Beirut, assembly outdated buddies and consuming his favourite hummus was sufficient to heal outdated wounds.
Whereas in Washington, he additionally served as editor for the Center East Occasions and for the Washington Occasions and earned a grasp’s diploma in battle evaluation and administration from Royal Roads College in Victoria, British Columbia.
Salhani steadily appeared on TV as a political analyst specializing within the Center East, Central Asia, politicized Islam and terrorism. He was recognized to have by no means rejected a journalist’s interview request “even in the course of the evening.”
He’s the creator of 4 books: Black September to Desert Storm: A Journalist within the Center East (College of Missouri,1998); Whereas the Arab World Slept: The Affect of the Bush Years on the Center East (Xlibris Corp., 2009), Islam With no Veil: Kazakhstan’s Path of Moderation (Potomac Books, 2011) and Inauguration Day: A Thriller (NY: Yucca, 2015).
Salhani died Aug. 13 in Paris.
“He went peacefully and with out ache. We’re heartbroken to have misplaced a really particular particular person with an enormous coronary heart,” his son, Justin, advised UPI. “My father will doubtless be remembered as a famous photojournalist, creator and analyst and he can be happy with that…The void he is left behind might be unimaginable to fill however I would not commerce the time we had collectively for something.”
Salhani can also be survived by his daughter, Isabelle.
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