The US on Friday denied threatening the family of executed reporter James Foley with prosecution had they raised a ransom for his release, insisting the government did everything possible to bring him home.
Foley’s mother, Diane, had told US media her family was warned it could be charged if it tried to raise the money to free their son.
“We were just told to trust that he would be freed somehow, miraculously,” James Foley’s mother said on CNN. “And he wasn’t, was he?”
Spokesman Josh Earnest said the White House had been “in regular touch with the Foley family” to give updates and to communicate that the captured reporter’s “return and his rescue continued to be a priority of this administration.”
However, Diane Foley said she felt the family’s “efforts to get Jim freed were an annoyance” to the US government, adding: “It didn’t seem to be in our strategic interest, if you will.”
Earnest said long-standing US policy forbids paying ransoms, because doing so “only puts other Americans in a position where they’re at even greater risk.”
He referred questions about whether the Foleys would have been prosecuted by the US Department of Justice.
However, he said Obama used “every tool at our disposal” to try to free Foley, including a “high-risk” military rescue attempt.
US Secretary of State John Kerry also responded to the remarks, saying he was “really taken aback,” and that he was “totally unaware and would not condone anybody” at the US Department of State making any threatening statements.
“I and others in the government worked as hard as we know how to reach out to country after country — dozens of countries were talked to in an effort to try to create some avenue of success,” Kerry said. “Tragically, obviously, we were not successful in finding them. So my heart goes out to the family.”
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said officials worked “to help the family understand what our laws are about ... paying ransom to terrorists.”
However, “this department would never, and did not ever, intend to, nor do we think we ever did anything that we would consider threatening,” she said.
The freelance reporter’s death was revealed on Aug. 19 in a video released by Islamic State militants, in which he is seen being beheaded.
The Islamic State said his killing was in response to US air strikes. A week later it released a second video showing the beheading of another US journalist, Steven Sotloff.
Foley had covered wars in Afghanistan, Libya and Syria and contributed to GlobalPost, Agence France-Presse and other outlets. He was seized by armed men in northern Syria in 2012.
James Foley’s family launched a foundation in his name on Friday to support kidnap victims, frontline journalism and inner-city youth.
Foley’s parents announced the James W. Foley Legacy Fund with full-page ads in major newspapers and on the new foundation’s Web site, four weeks after his death.
His family issued a plea for donations to build a foundation to fund the good works he supported in his lifetime, writing: “Jim did not die in vain. Please help us build on his memory.”
“Jim and his family, like many other US hostages and their families, have experienced the devastating consequences of inconsistent, opaque, and unaccountable policies of governments in hostage situations. This has to change,” the site says.
During James Foley’s captivity, he was held alongside more than a dozen foreign hostages. Several Europeans were freed alive, allegedly after ransoms were paid.
The US and Britain say they do not pay ransoms to groups they regard as terrorists.
James Foley and Sotloff were killed and British captive David Haines has been threatened with death.
“We will form a resource center and support network for US hostage families,” the Foleys wrote.
They called for “an international dialogue to establish a standard world-wide policy for kidnapping prevention and resolution.”
In addition to working for hostages, the legacy fund will work with existing watchdogs like the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders to help frontline reporters.
And, in honor of the four years James Foley spent working with inner-city youth as a teacher, the foundation will support inclusive teaching initiatives.
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