President Obama is set to announce on Wednesday that families attempting to pay ransoms for loved ones held hostage will no longer be faced with criminal prosecution by the U.S. government.
The U.S. has maintained a policy of not paying ransom to groups it considers Foreign Terror Organizations (FTOs) but a series of brutal executions committed by the Islamic State against American citizens last year generated controversy.
Last summer, the Islamic State beheaded American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff in videos that were later released to the public. The Foley family knew that their son was held hostage in Syria prior to the release of the video and that paying a ransom could secure his release. But government officials threatened to prosecute should the Foleys attempt to pay the ransom.
“I was surprised there was so little compassion,” Diane Foley told ABC News last September. She claimed to have received three separate government warnings that advised her not to pay the Islamic State. “It just made me realize that these people talking to us had no idea what it was like to be the family of someone abducted… I’m sure [the U.S. official] didn’t mean it the way he said it, but we were between a rock and a hard place. We were told we could do nothing… meanwhile our son was being beaten and tortured every day.”
The Sotloffs shared a similar experience. “The family felt completely and utterly helpless when they heard this,” Barak Barfi, a family spokesman, said. “The Sotloffs felt there was nothing they could do to get Steve out.”
Obama will use a presidential directive and executive order, according to the New York Times, to allow the government to “communicate and negotiate with captors holding Americans or help family members seeking to do so in order to ensure their safe return.”
A review of the current policy was launched in December after heavy criticism from the families of American hostages. Some of these families were interviewed for the review. A total of 82 families were invited to take part of which only 24 accepted.
The idea behind the current policy is that if America pays FTOs then it will set a precedent by putting Americans at greater risk of kidnapping while funding terrorist activity. The emergence of the Islamic State though seems to have shattered that concept, as countries that paid ransoms (like France and Spain) secured the release of their nationals while the American and British hostages were filmed being barbarically executed.
Controversy also emerged around a deal last year that traded five Taliban detainees for American Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. The Taliban was added to the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT) by executive order in July 2002 but is not listed as a FTO by the State Department.
Now a “fusion cell” — made up of officials from the FBI, State Department and the Pentagon and led by the FBI’s Michael McGarrity — has been formed to coordinate response to hostage-taking among various departments, the Washington Post reported.
“Under the new policy, all government officials who interact with hostages’ families must also receive specialized training on the dynamics of hostage-taking, its impact on victims’ relatives and how to support both current and recovered hostages and their families,” the New York Times reported Tuesday.
Nonetheless, the new policy was criticized by some in Congress. “Wholesale changes are needed, but what’s being put forward is nothing more than window dressing, I fear,” Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, told the Post. “It’s a pathetic response to a serious problem that has plagued the ability of the U.S. to successfully recover Americans held captive in the post-9/11 era.”