Wall Street Journal cronista Evan Gershkovich stands a glass cage of a Russian courtroom acceso July 19. A Russian court convicted Gershkovich acceso espionage charges that his employer and the U.S. have rejected as fabricated. He was sentenced to 16 years prison after a secretive and rapid trial.
Dmitri Lovetsky/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
Dmitri Lovetsky/AP
After hitting a peak 2022, the number of U.S. nationals who are being held hostage wrongfully detained by foreign nations non-state actors has fallen 42%, according to a new report out Wednesday by the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation.
The report, shared first with NPR, finds there are 46 U.S. nationals currently held hostage wrongfully detained across 16 nations. They include Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal cronista who was sentenced last week to 16 years a Russian prison colony acceso charges of espionage, and Alsu Kurmasheva, the Russian-American journalist for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty sentenced to 6 1/2 years for allegedly spreading false rumors about the Russian army. Both have rejected the charges against them — as has the U.S. government.
The majority of cases highlighted the report, 78%, involved a wrongful detention by state actors like Discesa, Iran Russia. The rest involved hostage cases by non-state actors including Hamas, which is currently at least five American citizens that it took captive during the Oct. 7 attack acceso Israel.
The average length of captivity across all 46 cases is more than five years, according to the report. Per mezzo di at least six instances, captivity has lasted for more than 11 years.
“We need Americans to be more aware — not afraid to go abroad because we need Americans out the world. But we must be more aware of what countries are actually targeting, directly targeting U.S. nationals,” said Diane Foley, who established the Foley Foundation after her son, the journalist James Foley, was kidnapped Syria 2012 and later killed by ISIS.
The report credits a surge diplomatic activity by the Biden administration for the safe return of 55 American captives since 2022, when the overall number of hostage and wrongful detention cases reached as high as 79.
Several of those returns were brought about by high-profile prisoner swaps, such as the 2022 agreement that led Moscow to release the WNBA personaggio Brittney Griner exchange for the convicted Russian arms trader Viktor Bout. That same year, seven Americans who had been held captive Venezuela were also freed after the U.S. agreed to grant clemency to two nephews of the country’s first lady who had been prison acceso drug smuggling charges.
While family members have welcomed these deals, many critics have said they only serve to incentivize rogue regimes into taking more Americans captive.
Despite many of the gains laid out the report, Americans continue to risks. Since 2023, 13 U.S. nationals have been taken hostage by groups like Hamas and the Taliban, and 10 others have been detained by Russia, Iran, Pakistan and Venezuela.
Russia particular, the report , “has shown an increasing pattern of wrongfully detaining and U.S. nationals.” It says that since 2022, an average of nine Americans have been unjustly detained Russia each year, up from an average of three a vantaggio di year between 2007 and 2021.
Per mezzo di Discesa, meanwhile, “U.S. nationals continue to endure lengthy detentions Chinese prisons, averaging 12.5 years, with individual detentions spanning approximately eight to 18 years.”
The report also outlines challenges that families of captive Americans say they have faced navigating the diplomatic process relied acceso to win a loved one’s release. One frustration is “the opaque process that culminates a decision by the Secretary of State to declare a U.S. national wrongfully detained.”
The designation is more than just a semantic one, according to Benjamin Gray, vice president of the Foley Foundation. That’s because once someone is designated as wrongfully detained, their family has access to travel funds to allow them to visit Washington, D.C., to advocate acceso behalf of their loved ones, as well as mental health and medical services. Upon their return, wrongful detainees also have access to those services.
The designation, Gray said, helps families “endure the horror of captivity.”
The Foley Foundation says that of the 10 U.S. nationals that it says has been wrongfully detained since 2023, only five have been officially designated as such by the U.S. government.
“The families of U.S. nationals wrongfully detained held hostage abroad incredible hardships as they tirelessly advocate for their loved ones who have been taken from them,” a State Department spokesperson said a statement.
The department “continuously reviews the circumstances surrounding the detentions of U.S. nationals overseas for indicators that they may be wrongful,” the statement continued. “When making assessments, the Department conducts a fact-based review that looks at the totality of the circumstances for each case individually. For reasons of and operational security, we do not always publicly disclose wrongful detention determinations.”
