Diane Foley was a nurse. She gave that job up when her son, James Foley, an American journalist reporting in Syria, was taken hostage in 2012. She suddenly had a much more daunting role: trying to track down and save her child.
We know now that it was Islamic State (IS) militants who took him, the so-called IS Beatles group named on account of their British upbringing and accents. Over 18 months, they tortured James with waterboarding and mock executions.
We also know that he was beheaded by those same militants in the Raqqa region of Syria, an unthinkable act that was filmed and uploaded online for the world to see. Many, many people watched that murder who cannot unsee such an act, including one of James’s siblings.
But Diane Foley did not.
I interviewed her this week on Woman’s Hour because she has put her extraordinarily painful experiences into a powerful new book simply but beautifully titled American Mother. Her account includes details of her remarkable meeting with one of those responsible for torturing her boy and involved in his killing, the former British citizen Alexanda Kotey, who is serving his prison sentence in the US.
But it is the actions of Diane and her family in the run up to James’s killing and since that are important to consider now.
The Foley family were largely fighting alone in the dark, as Diane puts it, right down to the way in which James’s death was communicated to them. But it is a sign of the times that they tried to find other ways to help their boy which did not involve the US government. The age of deference is increasingly over – as is always listening to what those in charge do, or crucially do not, say.
James Foley was killed nearly 10 years ago and the US government is now at pains to stress that the entire experience for citizens related to hostages is now different. This is partly because of an Executive Order passed by Barack Obama to coordinate support for hostages’ families and hostages’ release, but also crucially because of the campaigning of people like Diane who refused to be ignored.
It was under the same president that Diane found herself not knowing if her son was dead or alive for eight long months in 2012. She had no idea where he was being held, and neither did anyone else, it seemed. Diane was under the impression from the conversations she was able to have with US government officials that getting her Jim out of captivity was the US government’s top priority. Diane did not know that the firm US position – contrary to other European countries, excluding the UK – was to never negotiate with terrorists.
“I was terribly ignorant of that policy,” she explained. “I quit my job in the spring shortly after he was kidnapped. I just began taking trips to Washington to try to figure out who could help me and it was a very frightening time – because no one could help me. Everyone kept referring me to someone else. I was sent in circles, if you will, but they kept reassuring me that Jim was their highest priority. And no one talked about our stance against negotiating.”
There was a failed US mission in 2014 to try to get James out, which she only learned of after his death.
Bar occasional communication from the US government, and attempts by journalists to help them get information, Diane and her family were “totally alone”.
So she did all she could, including going around Washington on her own and travelling to France to see how its media and government were handling differently things when it came to hostages.
James’s death was confirmed to her in the way it was to the rest of the world: on national TV by President Obama. The personal telephone call from the President followed a full three days later.
In our interview Diane expressed admiration for Richard Ratcliffe and his long, painful campaign to have his wife, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, freed from an Iranian jail. I conducted the first interview with Nazanin after her hard-won release and most of what she said will live with me for the rest of my life, but I had interviewed her husband many, many more times and saw a similar pattern to the Foleys’ approach.
During the six years Nazanin was imprisoned, Richard dealt with five foreign secretaries – an unprecedented number. Richard was so desperate over what he saw as obfuscations and blocks from the Foreign Office he eventually took to the streets and went on hunger strike. Richard felt he had no levers left to pull, having already flouted behind the scenes advice to keep quiet and let the diplomats and politicians handle his wife’s fate. He needed to find a way to keep his wife’s plight in the headlines and he succeeded.
The exact circumstances of Nazanin’s release are still clouded by unanswered questions – namely, despite denials on both sides, the payment of an acknowledged £400m British debt to Iran. It was confirmed that the debt had been paid but the link was never officially made.
Putting that to one side for a moment, Nazanin was freed. James Foley was not. But what both terrifying experiences share is a David and Goliath element to them. One family or person, going up against state machinery – often across two or more countries – despite officials passing them from one person or office to another. These families found their own ways to stay in the news and try to get answers.
Their brave and continued fight reminds me in another way of the Post Office scandal and the tireless work of people like Alan Bates. The former subpostmaster who led the dogged campaign to expose the Horizon IT scandal just kept going. The reporting of journalists and eventually an ITV drama about Alan’s fight for justice eventually brought the case to national prominence. But before that, he spent years campaigning for subpostmasters masters like himself who were wrongly accused of theft.
Now look. This week, it was announced that new legislation is expected to come in by the end of July to clear hundreds of people wrongly convicted in the Post Office scandal. That is lightning speed by government standards.
The age of deference is definitely nearly over. I shudder to think of the many who came before us and are still to come, lacking the means and wherewithal to do as the Alan Bates, Richard Ratcliffes and Diane Foleys of this world have had to do. Those who had to simply accept being passed from system to system, person to person, knowing not enough was being done.
While we rightly worry about citizens going too far and not believing anything their elected officials say, instead preferring conspiracy myths on social media, there are also more and more examples of people refusing to accept a wrong and going against their employer or government, if they have to.
Diane Foley founded the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation in September 2014, less than a month after her son’s execution. As she told to me of her government’s inability to save her boy: “I was so angry. I was really very angry at our country – for the way I had been treated. Particularly the way Jim was a non-entity to them. I resolved that we as a country had to do better. We had to have the backs of our brave innocent people targeted abroad simply for being a US citizen.” This is now the focus of that work and foundation. She may not have been able to save her son, but she never stopped trying.
Now she fights for other American hostages abroad. Her refusal to accept being left alone in the dark has changed some things but still the fight goes on. And on, and on.