Officials and experts agree that these recent cases reflect what Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken in February called a “rising trend” in which American enemies are “wrongfully detaining people, often as political pawns.”...
[I]n roughly the past 10 years, as foreign terrorist threats have receded, the imprisonment of Americans by hostile governments on false or inflated legal charges has risen sharply, according to Danielle Gilbert, an assistant professor at Northwestern University who studies so-called hostage diplomacy....
Families of prisoners.... enlist celebrities and the media to help pressure U.S. officials to “do whatever it takes,” as they often say.... Ms. Gilbert noted that such deals have proven to be politically popular. Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden have benefited from heartwarming Oval Office meetings with freed prisoners and their families, and dramatic accounts of how their leadership sealed the deals....
The article links to Trump's response at Truth Social:
पोस्ट्स
