I’ve never been kidnapped and thankfully, have never known anyone who has. But I fear it when I’m traveling abroad. Call me paranoid. I’m vigilant when I walk through Penn Station every day, and when I see an unattended bag, I tell the nearest cop.
I also fear this kind of danger for my children, now older teenagers, who go where they like and do what they like. I’m proud that they enjoy traveling and find ways to do it cheaply. I’m proud that they’re avid seekers of new experiences, but I’m concerned because they are and will always be “Americans” traveling abroad.
Americans, even in neutral countries, have always had a special mark on their head. To many, Americans are just louder, ruder, less likely to speak a foreign language, and generally just stand out more than other nationalities. Because we are the number one super-power, we’re also synonymous with money. Thus, we are targets.
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The conventional wisdom in traveling abroad is — don’t act like an American. Take the normal precautions as any tourist would, but if stopped, say you’re Canadian. Sew that Canadian maple leaf on your backpack and pick a major province, like Ontario. If stopped and questioned, you’re from Toronto.
This wisdom still holds.
I bring this up because in an about-face last week, the Obama administration decided it would no longer threaten criminal prosecution for families who negotiate with terrorists for the release of their loved ones.
In other words, the government is guaranteeing it will not bring charges of providing material aid to terrorists or aiding and abetting a terrorist organization if the family of a kidnap victim pays ransom to set him free.
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It’s a wise choice, but one fraught with danger.
It’s long been the U.S. position not to deal with terrorists in any way. The emphasis was first on avoidance and then, if kidnapped, on rescue. The government’s position has not changed. What has changed is how the individual family or employer or loved one can act.
What brought about the change is hard to pinpoint. Perhaps egged on by the New Yorker article this week, “Five Hostages,” the government is implicitly acknowledging that it’s wrong for them to add to the already excruciating burden a family bears when their loved one is kidnapped. True, no one has ever been prosecuted as such, but families have chosen not to seek money or outside help based on the threat alone.
Perhaps the government, itself, realizes that paying ransom is the best option to win a hostage’s freedom.
Other countries have been doing this for years — secretly, through back channels, winning the release of their citizens. The U.S. has been the odd man out.
How must it have felt for American families to see the freed Danish, French, or Spanish hostages all of whom had ransom paid by their governments or their families — many of whom were literally tied back-to-back to an American hostage — and feel their hands were figuratively tied in relation to their own child?
No family should be put through this torture. Now at least, those families can be empowered to make their own personal, moral decision on what they’re willing to do to free their child.
Everyone knows this money (and the demand is generally tens to hundreds of millions of dollars per hostage) is being used to fill the coffers of terrorist or just plain criminal organizations. The money might build weapons arsenals, train adherents, fund further plots. The lifting of the ban is an incentive to kidnap more.
But what choice is there? Of the five Americans covered in the New Yorker article, only one made it out alive. And that was the man whose family approached an intermediary in Qatar who brokered his freedom. The others, told to leave things to the government and trust them, were left only with death. According to one family, the FBI liaison in charge of their son’s case was actually calling them for weekly updates, instead of the other way around.
So what can the U.S. do? Clearly every American traveling abroad is first and foremost responsible for his own safety. Travel wise, and travel discrete.
What about offering a bounty for information on any kidnapping? Instead of going under, maintaining strict secrecy when a person is kidnapped as the terrorists’ demand, what if the family posted pictures on websites and appeared on networks like Al Jazeera offering a reward for information? Yes, that’s risky, too, but maybe with the right incentive, including perhaps a government offer to provide safe passage, people from communities close to hostage outposts would come forward, thus giving intervention forces a better hope of rescuing them. The federal government has long had a tradition of cooperating with criminals in exchange for information against others, why should this be any different?
Ending the threat of criminal prosecution levels the playing field so that the U.S. isn’t the only country whose families are prohibited from direct contact with their child’s captors. It makes sense, it gives families some sense of control and choice.
The problem is, it could endanger Americans more.
Toni Messina has been practicing criminal defense law since 1990, although during law school she spent one summer as an intern in a large Boston law firm and realized quickly it wasn’t for her. Prior to attending law school, she worked as a journalist from Rome, Italy, reporting stories of international interest for CBS News and NPR. She keeps sane by balancing her law practice with a family of three children, playing in a BossaNova band and dancing flamenco. She can be reached at [email protected] or tonimessinalaw.com.