Donald Trump
signed a new law intended to punish state hostage takers and help to bring home US citizens held abroad.
The Robert Levinson Recovery and Hostage Taking Accountability Act was named after the former FBI agent who was snatched on Iran’s Kish Island more than 13 years ago while on a corruption investigation.
His family learnt
this year that he had died in custody. It has continued campaigning efforts on behalf of other hostages and to seek the return of
Levinson’s remains.
The US imposed sanctions
this month on two senior Iranian military officers who Washington held responsible for Levinson s abduction and death.
How Diane Foley pushed to bring suspects in son s murder to U.S.
By Eric Tucker
WASHINGTON As two Islamic State militants faced a judge in Virginia last month, Diane Foley of Rochester, listened from home through a muffled phone connection and strained to make out the voices of the men prosecutors say kidnapped her son before he was murdered.
Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh stand accused of belonging to an IS cell dubbed the Beatles, an incongruously lighthearted nickname for British citizens blamed for the jailing, torture and murder of Western hostages in Syria.
After geopolitical breakthroughs and stalemates, military actions in Syria and court fights in London, the Justice Department s most significant terrorism prosecution in years was finally underway. For Foley, who months earlier had pleaded with Attorney General William Barr to pursue justice by forswearing the death penalty, the fact the case was proceeding at all felt miraculous.