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“He was a lot larger and messier than what I assumed he could be,” McCann added. “I like these issues, and I feel more and more, we don’t wish to speak about these issues.”
For McCann, probably the most exceptional second within the encounters got here on the conclusion of the third and remaining assembly, when Foley reached out to shake Kotey’s hand. To McCann’s shock, Kotey clasped her hand — an act that may be prohibited underneath some interpretations of Islamic regulation. When McCann later questioned Kotey in regards to the change, Kotey answered that Foley was “like a mom to us all,” thereby excusing the contact underneath a familial exemption.
“He’s touched the hand of a lady,” stated McCann, “however he’s acknowledged her as a mom.”
Ultimately, Foley’s anger was directed extra at her personal nation than at Kotey. When James Foley was taken hostage, she stated she was usually left at the hours of darkness by a authorities that maintained a strict coverage of not negotiating with terrorists. Foley stated she spent years being shuttled between companies, and was even threatened with prosecution ought to her household attempt to pay her son’s ransom. “I used to be enraged at how our nation had handled me, the way in which they handled Jim’s plight,” she stated.
Through her basis, Foley urged President Obama to reform the United States’s worldwide hostage coverage. It was partially on her instigation that Obama finally shaped hostage response teams on the F.B.I. and the National Security Council, and created the place of a hostage coordinator to assist households. “She is pure guts,” stated the published journalist Judy Woodruff, who has interviewed Foley a number of instances. “She’s in a position to look highly effective authorities officers within the face and say, ‘This is what we’ve acquired to do.’”
More not too long ago, Foley was amongst those that efficiently argued for the passage of the Levinson Act via Congress, which additional bolstered sources to convey again hostages.
“What we consult with because the hostage restoration enterprise would seemingly not exist in any respect with out Diane Foley,” stated Roger Carstens, the particular presidential envoy on the State Department for hostage affairs. Carstens believes even the Biden administration’s negotiation course of to safe the discharge final yr of six Americans wrongfully detained in Venezuela may be straight traced to her advocacy. “She created the equipment that makes it attainable to convey individuals like them house,” he stated.
