![]() ![]() troops in the country,” she said of Syria, “and that our intelligence and our president chose to pursue Baghdadi and find him.” Foley has been vocal about her conviction that ISIS members should stand trial rather than be killed in theaters of war she has said as well that, when it comes to justice for convicted ISIS fighters, she prefers life imprisonment to the death penalty. “I’m grateful, I’m very grateful, that we still had U.S. But the pain was accompanied by something else as well: a sense of relief. He had killed himself, reportedly detonating a suicide vest while being pursued by American forces in northwest Syria.Īnd so came, for Foley, that repeated horror-the reopening of wounds that can never be fully healed. O’Brien confirmed to Foley what would soon be widely reported: Baghdadi was dead. Because of that work, Foley was one of the small group of people who learned that Baghdadi had died before President Trump announced the news yesterday morning: On Saturday night, Foley told me, she and her family received a phone call from the FBI’s Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell informing them only that, as Foley put it, “one valuable target had been located.”ĭiane Foley learned the extent of the news before most other Americans-this time in a call from Robert O’Brien, the Trump administration’s special presidential envoy for hostage affairs (and, as of September, its national security adviser). Foley Legacy Foundation, which advocates for the safe return of those hostages and works to help protect freelance journalists working in conflict zones. In the aftermath of her son’s capture, Diane Foley, as those touched by tragedy sometimes will, became an accidental activist: She advocated on behalf of James, first fighting for his release and then, after his death, speaking on behalf of the many other people who are still held hostage by ISIS and other groups. military actions in Iraq.) In the years since his death, however, Foley’s family and colleagues-including many of the people with whom he was held captive, who were freed-have worked to effect another kind of justice: to ensure that Foley, despite all his tragic symbolism, would be remembered in his full and individual complexity. (The video of Foley’s death-ISIS titled it “A Message to America”-included the group’s declaration that Foley’s execution was intended as retaliation for U.S. The group tried to treat Foley as a stand-in for America itself. In his murder, ISIS tried to turn James Foley, the person, into James Foley, the symbol. And the attention itself helps, in its way, to carry on Foley’s work: He went to Syria in the first place because of the stories that he believed needed to be told. ‘100% Not True,’ Ground Reports Say,” a New York Times headline read in February.) The ISIS leader’s demise has been, in its own way, a catalyst. (“Trump Declares ISIS ‘100%’ Defeated in Syria. ![]() There is a certain small justice in the idea that Baghdadi’s death has brought renewed public attention to ISIS as a continued threat. We spoke hours after President Donald Trump confirmed Baghdadi’s death, saying in a nationally televised address that the terrorist “died like a dog” during a U.S. “Whenever anything like this happens, it brings back all of the horror,” Diane Foley told me yesterday. But the death this weekend of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the longtime leader of the Islamic State, resurfaced trauma for Foley’s family. The man who killed Foley was known as Jihadi John. ![]() The video of Foley’s death was, for many in the American public, an early introduction to ISIS as an agent of terror and unspeakable brutality. In August 2014, however, ISIS released the video that depicted Foley’s gruesome murder: An ISIS fighter stood in front of a camera and decapitated the 40-year-old journalist. James’s mother, Diane Foley, spent nearly two years fighting for her son’s release, through distance and false hopes and failed attempts at rescue. This ethos is what drove the journalist James Foley toward conflict zones-first in Libya, and then in Syria, where he was kidnapped and eventually killed. But there are still moments that shock and galvanize-news events that can serve as strong antidotes to moral lethargy. Attention is a finite resource empathy can be, too. ![]()
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