Is it time to revisit our prohibition on paying ransom?
by digby
Uhm, if true, this is just horrible:
Obama administration officials repeatedly threatened the family of murdered journalist James Foley that they might face criminal charges for supporting terrorism if they paid ransom to the ISIS killers who ultimately beheaded their son, his mother and brother said this week.
“We were told that several times and we took it as a threat and it was appalling,” Foley’s mother Diane told ABC News in an interview.
She said the warnings over the summer came primarily from a highly decorated military officer serving on the White House’s National Security Council staff, which five outraged current and former officials with direct knowledge of the Foley case also recounted to ABC News in recent weeks.
“Three times he intimidated us with that message. We were horrified he would say that. He just told us we would be prosecuted. We knew we had to save our son, we had to try,” Diane Foley said.
Nice, really nice …
As I’ve written before, this issue of ransom is one that has to be discussed more fully especially not that warhawks and terrorists are using the recorded execution of hostages for propaganda and recruitment purposes. I don’t think our adamant refusal to ever “negotiate with terrorists” is getting the results we want. Not claiming to have the answer here, but something’s gone wrong.
And threatening the family of someone who ended up being publicly beheaded with criminal charges of aiding terrorism is just disgusting. And I don’t know that this is even official US policy. According to this article it isn’t:
The U.S. government certainly tried to save James Foley before he was executed by Islamic State extremists. Sources have told The Washington Post that a secret raid was conducted in a bid to save the American journalist and others. It failed because the hostages were not at that location at that moment.
However, there may have been one big tactic they didn’t try: paying a ransom. David Rohde, a well-respected journalist who works at the Atlantic and the Reuters news agency, touched upon this Wednesday, when he wondered whether U.S. foreign policy had failed Foley with its refusal to negotiate with his captors. Rohde points out that journalists of other nationalities were apparently released after their governments paid large sums to the Islamic State, something the U.S. government refuses to do (though private individuals and entities may).
Rohde has spoken out about this before:
In the days and weeks ahead, the Foley family will speak for themselves about their ordeal. But the payment of ransoms and abduction of foreigners must emerge from the shadows. It must be publicly debated. American and European policymakers should be forced to answer for their actions.
Foley believed that his government would help him, according to his family. In a message that was not made public, Foley said that he believed so strongly that Washington would help that he refused to allow his fellow American captives to not believe in their government.
A consistent response to kidnapping by the U.S. and Europe is desperately needed. The current haphazard approach is failing.
If what the Foley family is saying is true, we have a major problem on our hands. Threatening the family of an abducted journalist with criminal charges for terrorism is indeed appalling. But the fact that everyone, including the president, is using the execution of these prisoners as a rationale for military action means that this policy has major ramifications we have not fully examined.
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