Members of a US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State (IS) on Thursday vowed to stick by global resolutions to refuse to pay ransoms for citizens held hostage by the group, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), US officials said.
The pledge to abide by UN Security Council resolutions came after about 25 members of the coalition Counter-ISIL Finance Group met in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on May 7.
A communique issued by the group “rejects the payment or facilitation of ransoms to ISIL, so as to deny ISIL an important source of funds and remove a key incentive for ISIL to engage in further kidnapping or hostage-taking activities,” the US Department of Treasury and US Department of State said.
The group, co-chaired by Italy, Saudi Arabia and the US, was set up in Brussels last year as part of US-led efforts to fight the Islamic State group.
It also urged “private sector partners to adopt or to follow relevant guidelines and best practices for preventing and responding to ISIL kidnappings without paying ransoms.”
US, Japanese and Jordanian hostages have been among those brutally killed by the Islamic State after being kidnapped during the group’s march across swaths of Iraq and Syria.
While the US has stuck to its policy of refusing to pay money to win the release of its nationals, arguing that such a move would endanger all US citizens, other Western countries are known to have paid large ransoms to free hostages.
The statement, backed by 25 nations, is set to give a boost to the US policy, even as US President Barack Obama’s administration reviews the stand following sharp criticism, particularly from hostages’ families.
“We understand the policy about not paying ransom,” said Carl Mueller, the father of US aid worker Kayla Mueller, 26, who died in February after being kidnapped in the Syrian city of Aleppo in 2013. “But on the other hand, any parents out there would understand that you would want anything and everything done to bring your child home. And we tried. And we asked. But they put policy in front of American citizens’ lives.”
US officials have alleged that the Islamic State was at one time one of the world’s richest terror groups, raising US$2 million per day from the illicit sales of crude oil.
Since then the US-led coalition has targeted captured oil fields in airstrikes aiming to choke off finances to the extremists.
Ransoms and the sales of plundered cultural treasures were also profitable activities for the group which has to ensure vital services for residents in cities it has captured, such as Iraq’s second-largest city Mosul.
“The latest trends in ISIL’s exploitation and smuggling of energy resources and cultural property” were also discussed by the working group, the US Department of State said, adding that they also discussed “concrete measures” to disrupt the flow of funds to the group.
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