BREAKING NEWS
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| Obama Expected to Drop Prosecution Threat for Families Who Ransom Hostages |
Tuesday, June 23, 2015 10:45 AM EDT
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| President Obama on Wednesday will announce that the government will no longer threaten criminal prosecution of the families of American hostages who are held abroad by groups like the Islamic State if they attempt to pay ransom for the release of their loved ones. The change is one of many that are intended to fix what the administration has acknowledged is a broken policy on United States captives, a senior administration official said. |
| In a presidential directive and an executive order, Mr. Obama also plans to make clear that while he is keeping a longstanding federal prohibition against making concessions to those who take hostages, the government can communicate and negotiate with captors holding Americans or help family members seeking to do so in order to ensure their safe return. |
| The changes make official what has long been the United States government’s unspoken practice in some hostage cases, but one that has been inconsistently applied and poorly understood both inside federal agencies and among family members desperate to win the release of their relatives. |
| American officials negotiated a swap to win the freedom of Bowe Bergdahl from his captors in Afghanistan, trading five Taliban detainees held at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. But they have told the families of Islamic State and Al Qaeda hostages that the “no-concessions” policy prevented them even from talking about potential terms of release in those cases, and warned that relatives could face criminal charges for offering ransoms themselves. |
| At times, families were given conflicting messages, as in the case of Theo Padnos, who was held by the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda for nearly two years before his release last summer. His mother, Nancy Curtis, has said the State Department threatened her with prosecution should she attempt to pay a ransom, while the Federal Bureau of Investigation offered to help her execute the transaction. |
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