August 19 will mark 10 years since our son, James W. Foley, an American freelance journalist, was publicly beheaded by ISIS to fuel the violent extremist group’s hate-filled propaganda. Six other Americans held captive abroad were also killed in 2014-15: journalists Steven Sotloff and Luke Somers, aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller, former FBI agent Robert Levinson, and businessman Warren Weinstein. These innocent Americans died because the U.S. government refused to negotiate – or even speak – with their captors. Hostages held by ISIS from most other nations were freed – not through a military operation, but through negotiation. The American and U.K. hostages were all killed because their governments refused to do the same.
They were essentially abandoned, not as a result of a policy, but because a slogan substituted for policy: “The United States does not negotiate with terrorists.” It was meant to convey strength and resolve, but it was a statement with no objective basis in fact, and when adhered to has cost us the lives of innocent fellow citizens. A dangerous secret military rescue mission was attempted but failed six weeks before Jim’s murder. The shock of those horrific murders became a moral awakening for our nation, as I described in my book, “American Mother.”
That public outrage was a catalyst for a comprehensive, self-critical governmental review that engaged hostage families as a key component. Thankfully, much has changed since then. The review resulted in President Barack Obama’s Presidential Policy Directive 30, which established the current U.S. mechanisms for addressing foreign hostage cases. It includes a Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs (SPEHA) at the U.S. Department of State, an interagency Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell (HRFC), and a Hostage Response Group at the National Security Council, all of which work together to prioritize the return of innocent Americans abducted by non-state captors. The 2020 Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery and Hostage-Taking Accountability Act added much-needed criteria for wrongful detentions — when Americans are unjustly arrested by nation states.
That progress has continued in both the Trump and Biden administrations, with more than 120 innocent Americans freed from captivity since 2015, more than half of which have occurred under the Biden administration. The U.S. government’s structure for addressing hostage situations and trying to prevent them from occurring in the first place is now admired by other nations. I am grateful to the many individuals of moral courage inside and outside of government who knew the country could do better and who have worked with the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, where I am founder and president, to make these successes possible.
A ‘True National Security Threat’
However, the targeting and kidnapping or wrongful detention of U.S. nationals continues and has become a true national security threat. The Foley Foundation has conducted independent, nonpartisan research on the crisis of hostage-taking and wrongful detention since 2019, compiled in an annual report entitled Bringing Americans Home that collects and analyzes qualitative and quantitative evidence-based data. The aim is to inform the American public, government officials, and lawmakers as to the policies and legislation necessary to prioritize the return of the 46 Americans currently held captive unjustly abroad and to prevent future hostage-taking.
This year’s report, released today, covers the period from Jan. 1, 2001, to May 31, 2024, and contains key facts, trends, and insights regarding the current hostage- and wrongful-detainee landscape, set into the larger context of the more than 437 U.S. nationals abducted and held captive abroad during that timeframe. Currently, at least 46 U.S. nationals are held hostage or wrongfully detained across 16 countries, with six cases lasting over 11 years and an average length of captivity of more than five years.
The number of Americans detained and held reached a historic peak in 2022. But since Jan. 1 of that year, the number of U.S. nationals held captive as either hostages or wrongful detainees has decreased 42 percent. Overall, during the current U.S. presidential administration, a total of 64 U.S. nationals have been released or rescued from captivity.
Since July 31, 2023, 13 U.S. nationals have been taken hostage by Hamas and the Taliban, with six hostages released by Hamas, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), and the Taliban through negotiations involving the United States, third parties, and other private efforts.
Since Jan. 1, 2023, 10 U.S. nationals have been wrongfully detained by Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and Venezuela. Of these, only five have been officially designated as “wrongfully detained” by the U.S. government, a designation that essentially declares the person to be a political hostage and allows the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs to take on the case to negotiate their freedom and support their family. Overall, 21 wrongful detainees have been released from captivity – 14 through prisoner swaps, four via humanitarian gestures, and three by unknown methods. Despite prisoner swaps during the past two years, there has been no subsequent increase in wrongful detentions of U.S. nationals in Iran or Venezuela, indicating that the long-held fear in some quarters that negotiations would lead to more kidnappings and detentions is largely unfounded.
China is wrongfully detaining 11 U.S. nationals, including those subjected to exit bans, with the captivity of those detained lasting an average of 12.5 years. Iran continues to wrongfully detain at least one U.S. national; five others were released in September 2023. Since 2022, the average number of U.S. nationals wrongfully detained in Russia has tripled compared with the prior 15-year period. Current cases in Russia include two Americans designated as wrongfully detained – Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan — and seven U.S. nationals who are not officially designated, including a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist Alsu Kurmasheva. Venezuela currently has no public cases of wrongful detention.
Recommendations from Hostage Families and Returned Captives
The heart of the 2024 Bringing Americans Home research is based on 62 interviews with individuals personally connected to a case in which a U.S. national was held hostage or wrongfully detained. Hostage families and returned captives face a myriad of challenges. Based on their lived experiences, these families are seeking:
- A quicker, more transparent wrongful-detention designation process.
- De-classification of more information about their loved ones’ cases, consistent communication throughout their loved ones’ captivity, and candid assessments regarding recovery efforts underway.
- Increased access to decision-makers at the White House.
- Improved reintegration services to address the physical, psychological, and economic impact from being held hostage or wrongfully detained.
- Access to travel funding for families whose loved ones are not yet designated as wrongfully detained so they can better advocate for their case.
These families’ experiences, when analyzed alongside recent trends and data that provide a historical perspective, support several specific recommendations for improvement:
- Institutionalize a National Security Council position – a Deputy Assistant to the President (DAP) — dedicated exclusively to hostage and wrongful-detention matters to coordinate and enhance strategic decision-making across relevant agencies.
- Establish direct lines of communication between the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs (SPEHA), the Director of the Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell (HRFC), and the president, coordinated through the DAP.
- Co-locate the HRFC and the Office of the SPEHA, supported with dedicated funding for both organizations that can be flexibly re-allocated between hostage- and wrongful-detention cases as threats shift.
- Dedicate resources within the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs to enable rapid, transparent evaluation of wrongful-detention cases impartially and efficiently, based on Levinson Act criteria, and to bolster communication with families.
- Ensure greater equity in the prioritization of cases and attention paid to them.
- Encourage bilateral and multilateral collective responses among Western allies to deter hostage-taking.
- Increase accountability and deterrence through increased use of the Levinson Act and the July 2022 Executive Order 14078, extended last year, which declared a national emergency to more robustly address hostage-taking and the wrongful detention of U.S. nationals abroad. These measures can be used more often to 1) designate or sanction individuals and entities engaged in or facilitating hostage-taking, and 2) explore creative uses of existing tools and develop new ones.
- Increase preventive public awareness campaigns to educate Americans about the risk of international hostage-taking to include greater engagement by NGOs and private industry.
- Encourage congressional oversight of the U.S. government’s response structures with hearings open to the public and build greater issue awareness among members and their staffs.
The Foley Foundation, for one, will be advocating for legislation that will mandate periodic comprehensive reviews of the U.S. government’s hostage enterprise, beginning in 2025 (marking the 10th anniversary of PPD-30, the directive that laid the foundation for these structures). The 2015 review was a hostage review, and the mechanisms it recommended were designed to address the issue of hostage-taking. They were not created to address hostage diplomacy by other nations, such as Russia, China, and Iran which target and wrongfully detain U.S. nationals, threatening America’s foreign policy and its economy.
James Foley aspired to be a man of moral courage. Let each of us summon the moral courage to continue to work together in a nonpartisan manner to secure the safety of fellow Americans held captive abroad.