The body of Lt. Col. William Higgins, who was kidnapped in 1988 and executed 17 months later, was handed over to U.S. embassy officials and flown home to the United States, authorities said.
The body was flown Monday to the mortuary at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where it will be officially identified.Higgins' decomposed body was dumped late Saturday on a street in the sprawling region of Haret Hreik in Beirut's southern suburbs.
"A dark page in the history of the U.N. peacekeeping forces has been folded," said Francois Juliani, spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar.
Two embassy officials, accompanied by the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Lebanon, Christopher Harnish, and a U.N. official escorted Higgins' body to a white ambulance parked at the entrance of the American University Hospital's morgue.
The decomposed body was placed into a wooden coffin wrapped in the American flag and was immediately transported in a heavily guarded convoy to the U.S. Embassy, where it was put on a helicopter and flown to Cyprus.
Higgins was kidnapped by a band linked to the Iranian-financed Hezbollah while serving with the U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon in February 1988 and was reported killed in July 1989.
Diplomatic sources said Tuesday the remains of murdered CIA chief in Lebanon William Buckley are expected to be returned by his kidnappers soon.
Meanwhile, the reputed leader of the Shiite Muslim extremists who held Westerners hostage in Lebanon has moved to Tehran.
Imad Mughniyeh left Lebanon for the Iranian capital before the Dec. 4 release of Terry Anderson, a Shiite source said.