Ten years ago Monday, my son, the journalist James Foley, was brutally murdered by ISIS in Syria.
On the day my son was killed I felt almost more rage against our government than I did against his killers. Along with so many other Americans kidnapped and taken hostage through recent years, it seemed to me that Jim was considered collateral damage by our political leaders. The government has claimed that it did all it could to bring Jim home but I refused to accept what I saw as its inaction.
We were told by a member of the National Security Council that we might face federal prosecution if we tried to raise the ransom to pay for Jim’s freedom. I stood by in bewilderment as the governments of France, Spain and Italy successfully negotiated for the lives of their citizens while our men and women were abandoned.
I knew, even in the depths of my pain, that such terror should happen to no mother.
In recent weeks, President Biden has been rightly hailed for the prisoner exchange that brought home the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, the former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, the Russian American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva and the Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza. For the remainder of his term, President Biden has vowed that he will “not stop working until every American wrongfully detained or held hostage around the world is reunited with their family.”
That emphasis on bringing hostages home is not just Mr. Biden’s legacy — it’s also my son’s, as well as those who died alongside him. Jim’s experience showed that only negotiation can surely bring back hostages.
In the decade since losing Jim, I learned that properly directed grief enables hope and change. I have tried to carry the message of his life out into the world. Over time, politicians and the public began to hear it. Even his killer eventually heard it. It is a message that I believe is one that we all must continue to listen to: To be moral, we must have courage, and we must speak out about our loved ones captured and wrongfully imprisoned overseas.
Jim had gone to Afghanistan, Libya and Syria to report not only on the plight of the people there but also on the condition of our soldiers. He was captured and tortured, a symbol of all America’s perceived transgressions. But even though Jim was an American citizen, we received the message harshly from as high up as the Oval Office: The American government would not engage with terrorists. This cruel, stubborn and misinformed policy cost Jim his life.
When news of Jim’s death reached our shores, our home in New Hampshire was inundated with letters, parcels, sympathy cards and gifts, including money. What could I do with such an outpouring? I did not want my son’s life to be in vain. He aspired to be a man of moral courage. He championed the value of knowing other people’s stories. He knew that dialogue, even with your enemy, can be a great weapon.
I had seen the photo of Jim left in the desert with his head resting grotesquely upon his back, but his death, and the death of his fellow hostages, surely had to mean something more. For his sake, I could not sink into despair.
A month after his death, I founded the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation. Its mission was to have our country prioritize the return of its citizens held captive abroad and to promote journalists’ safety worldwide. Being American is not a crime. Being a journalist is not a crime.
Three months after Jim’s death, President Barack Obama ordered the National Counterterrorism Center to undertake a full review of hostage policy, which included interviewing families who had suffered as we had. This was the first crack in our government’s wrongful hostage policy.
The bipartisan Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery and Hostage-Taking Accountability Act, named for an American who was abducted in Iran 17 years ago, was signed into law in 2020. The pace of hostage return accelerated. According to research conducted by our foundation, under the Trump administration, more than 44 hostages were brought back from 19 countries.
And, as we saw illustrated so powerfully last month, President Biden also believes hostage recovery is a national priority.
In October 2021, I had a chance to confront one of my son’s killers. British-born Alexanda Kotey was captured in Syria, stripped of his citizenship and brought to the United States. He pleaded guilty to hostage-taking resulting in death, conspiracy to murder U.S. citizens abroad and conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists resulting in death.
As part of his plea agreement, his victims and their families were allowed to talk to him.
I walked into a big, windowless Virginia courthouse room where Mr. Kotey sat at a table in a green short-sleeved jumpsuit with shackles on his ankles. Here, not four feet from me, was the man who had tortured my son. He had written the words that Jim was forced to say to the camera just moments before he was beheaded.
Though Mr. Kotey told me he was sorry for what had happened to our family, he would not express outright penitence for actions that he said were committed in the fog of war.
I didn’t hate Mr. Kotey. If anything, I felt sorry for him. I got a chance to look across the table and tell him about the life of the man whom he had taken from all of us: Jim Foley, a journalist whose spirit had changed the world.
Before I left, I held out my hand to the man responsible for so much pain. He glanced at me. I didn’t know it at the time, but touching my hand would have been a contravention of orthodox Islamic principles. But he reached out as we said goodbye to each other. After I left the room, he said he shook my hand because “she’s like a mother to us all.”
The work is not done, nor is the healing. But that day, and in the days that followed, I have thought of the collective grief — and power — of bereaved mothers everywhere. We don’t need anniversaries for things we can never forget.
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