Families of US hostages get pass to pay ransoms

In a major reversal of long- standing U.S. policy, President Barack Obama last week announced that families of Americans held hostage by terrorists would not face criminal prosecution for paying ransoms to their loved ones’ captors.

However, terrorists should disabuse themselves of the notion that it’s now open season for hostage-taking. U.S. policy of not paying ransoms or making concessions to terrorists has not changed, and as recent events have shown, capturing and harming innocent Americans in the ongoing war on global terrorism are a surefire way of bringing America’s military might to bear.

Since last summer, four Americans have been killed by the Islamic State: journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller. After the release of gruesome videos showing the beheadings of some hostages, Obama approved an airstrike campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Luke Somers, an American journalist kidnapped in Yemen, also was killed during a failed U.S, rescue attempt, while Warren Weinstein, an American held by al-Qaida, was accidentally killed by a U.S. drone strike against a terrorist compound in Pakistan.

These and other dastardly acts against Americans obviously had a profound effect on the president – as did the sharp criticism of the administration from families of some of the hostages.

They complained about receiving confusing and contradictory information from the government and took exception to the threats of prosecution for considering to pay terrorists to secure the release of hostages.

In total, more than 30 Americans are being held hostage abroad.

Obama ordered a review of U.S. hostage policy, and six months later the panel came to the conclusion that the government’s response to hostage families was inadequate. The threats of prosecution merely added to their anxiety.

JUSTICE TO IGNORE PART OF LAW

By clearing the way for payment of ransom without fear of criminal charges, the president is essentially allowing families to take actions the U.S. government has long said put Americans at risk, the Associated Press reported. While the government will continue to abide by prohibitions on paying ransoms or making other concessions to terrorists, the Justice Department indicated it would ignore the law in situations involving families.

European governments routinely pay ransom to win the release of hostages. However, Obama and his predecessors have argued that policy provides terrorists with funds to fuel dangerous activities and puts Americans at greater risk of kidnapping, the wire service noted.

Indeed, the new approach was greeted with some trepidation by Republicans on Capitol Hill who noted that for more than 200 years the U.S. has adhered to the policy of not paying ransom and not negotiating with terrorists.

“The concern that I have is that by lifting the long-held principle you could be endangering more Americans here and overseas,” said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said he, too, worries that paying ransom could encourage terrorism. But McCain, who met with the family of Arizona native Kayla Mueller, killed after being kidnapped by the Islamic State, added that “to tell a family member – as this administration did – that they could go to jail is unconscionable.”

McCain and Boehner have been in Washington long enough to know that President Obama was simply continuing a policy embraced by his predecessors. Republican President George W. Bush, who was in office when al-Qaida terrorists attacked America’s homeland on Sept. 11, 2001, orchestrated the invasion of Afghanistan and then Iraq. The subsequent increase in hostage-taking of Americans in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan prompted the Bush administration to make clear that the United States does not negotiate with terrorists, nor does it pay ransoms.

President Obama’s willingness to not only listen to the families of the hostages, but to assure them that his administration would not seek to prosecute if they paid ransoms is an act of solidarity and humanity.

The Internet has added a dimension to terrorism that never existed before. Now, every inhumane act – especially beheadings – is immediately available for people around the world to see.

Families of those killed are no longer able to mourn in private.