WNBA star Brittney Griner—
... has been sentenced to nine years in a Russian prison.
In February 2022,
Brittney Griner’s life changed forever.
Russian police say they found vape cartridges
in the WNBA player’s luggage containing hashish oil.
She was sentenced to nine years in a penal colony.
I hope that in your ruling that it doesn’t end my life here.
The Biden administration
is reportedly hoping to secure Griner’s release
by swapping her for a notorious Russian arms smuggler
nicknamed the “Merchant of Death.”
She represents the highest leverage
Russia has had against the United States in decades.
She should not be detained for a single day longer.
The US State Department has classified her arrest
as wrongful detainment,
claiming Russia is using trumped-up charges
as a tool in hostage diplomacy.
Hostage diplomacy is a way in which
states arrest foreigners and use them for leverage.
Hostage-taking by terrorist organizations
and non-state actors was a common tactic during the war on terror.
Obama, it’s only right we continue to strike the necks of your people.
It remains a tool that's used today,
but now it’s governments and state officials
who are the kidnappers.
I admit my crime. I again say that I am sorry.
Governments are doing this more and more,
which suggests that they’re learning from past behavior
that this is a successful tactic.
The strategy is working,
as states like North Korea and Iran use hostage diplomacy
to help achieve diplomatic concessions.
Under the deal, the US released from prison
seven men convicted of helping Iran’s nuclear program.
There’s a fear that ordinary citizens crossing borders
will become pawns in a geopolitical game of chess.
I do worry about it undermining
that sense of international rule of law and criminal justice.
So how does hostage diplomacy force nations to pay ransoms
and engage in prisoner swaps with enemy states?
And as more and more concessions are made to autocratic governments,
are we in danger of fueling a new era of hostage-taking?
[SYSTEM ERROR]
In 2016, an American student, Otto Warmbier,
was on a trip to North Korea when he was detained.
He had taken a political poster as a souvenir
and had subsequently been charged for vandalism,
disrespect to the regime.
My crime is the expected output of the United States administration’s
consistent hostile policy against the DPR Korea.
After what appeared to be a staged confession,
Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor
from a charge of subversion.
When he was finally released,
he was in a vegetative state and passed away shortly after
as a result of injuries he sustained while in captivity.
This tragic case highlights how authoritarian states
use their criminal justice system
to level the playing field with Western governments.
Just a few days after Otto was detained,
North Korea carried out its first nuclear test in three years.
Tensions with the rest of the world were suddenly at an all-time high,
and Otto became Pyongyang’s human shield
against any international backlash.
Governments like North Korea are hoping for additional leverage
in their broader negotiations with the United States and the West
for recognition, for the ability to pursue their nuclear program,
for the lifting of sanctions.
Trump would later claim Warmbier was a key factor
for the historic peace summit
between the US and North Korea in 2018,
where Pyongyang promised to denuclearize.
I think without Otto, this would not have happened.
Using foreign nationals as political pawns
goes far beyond North Korea.
So a number of these countries are already outcasts.
These are Iran.
These are Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea.
In 2014,
who was living in Iran,
was arrested and charged with espionage.
Breaking news on the American reporter:
Jason Rezaian has been convicted.
I spent 544 days as a hostage in Iran.
The US and other world powers
were in the midst of negotiations with Iran
over its nuclear program
and whether or not Iran would be willing to
curtail parts of that program
in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
As citizens are left in foreign jails
under false or trumped-up charges,
both their families and the prisoners
worry that their governments may leave them behind.
This type of detention is hurting him.
He’s hurting. It’s hurting his family.
We want him on bail.
It's a horrific thing to go through.
I was threatened on a daily basis
that I was set for imminent execution.
Most Americans who travel around the world
have two misinformed beliefs about their safety.
The first is that if they get themselves into trouble,
the United States will come to rescue them.
And the second is if they do nothing wrong,
there is no way they can get into trouble.
And both of these beliefs are flawed.
The origins of modern-day hostage diplomacy goes back decades.
In Iran in 1979,
US diplomats and citizens were captured by Iranian militants
in what would become the Iranian hostage crisis.
The lives of over 50 innocent people are at stake.
The foundation of civilized diplomacy is at stake.
For the first time in American history,
a 24/7 news cycle would broadcast for 444 days of the crisis.
The 222nd day of captivity.
The 285th day of captivity.
The 377th day of captivity for American hostages in Iran.
That case was the birth of
a lot of the important trappings around hostage diplomacy cases.
Americans were watching a crisis unfold on television
night after night.
This unprecedented level of media scrutiny
dealt a major blow to America’s global prestige.
I think it was kind of stunning for the American public back then
that somehow a country like Iran
would be able to grab 50 of our people
and hold on to the embassy for so long.
Hostage-taking and the media attention that comes with it
would become an infamous propaganda tool
during the war on terror.
As ISIS brutally murdered three young American men,
the plight of a fourth American hostage
remained a closely held secret.
Jihadist groups were very infamous for kidnapping foreigners
to use in their propagation and in their recruitment techniques.
American presidents and UK prime ministers
refused to negotiate with terrorist organizations,
even as their citizens face certain death.
We, of course, don’t pay ransom.
We do not pay ransom.
We don't pay ransoms to terrorists when they kidnap our citizens.
This is the so-called no-concessions policy.
It’s the idea that if you deny a perpetrator
the fruits of their labor,
then they’re not going to pursue that tactic in the future.
So if perpetrators know
that they’re not going to receive a ransom payment,
they might stop taking hostages.
The problem is that there’s little proof
that refusing kidnappers’ demands prevent future abductions.
The man being executed by beheading is James Foley,
a freelance journalist.
Countries that are willing to provide concessions
are far more likely to bring their people home.
And there’s not a clear set of evidence
that suggests their people are more likely to be taken hostage
than Americans or Brits, for example.
To make matters worse,
the US doesn’t even stick to its own policy.
The United States has been consistently inconsistent
that we don’t negotiate with terrorists
except when we negotiate with terrorists.
We don’t pay ransoms except for when we pay ransoms.
This inconsistency reveals the catch-22 that governments face.
The very thing that governments can use to bring their citizens home,
which is making concessions to the foreign government
holding citizens hostage,
might be incentivizing future cases like this.
This dilemma was made clear during Donald Trump’s presidency
as he took a softer stance on the no-concessions policy.
We have a few negotiations going.
I love doing it because I love the end result.
This is the end result.
But critics argue
that his willingness to negotiate with authoritarian leaders
put a target on American citizens traveling abroad.
It very likely taught our adversaries all around the world
that all you have to do is arrest an American on trumped-up charges,
and you will get the attention of the president of the United States.
So it's very possible that
the fact that we are seeing this trend on the rise
is because of that personal attention from President Trump.
In February 2022,
Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
That same month, WNBA star Brittney Griner
was detained on drug smuggling charges.
Griner’s detainment comes amid strained diplomatic relations
with the United States.
Griner has now become a key piece of leverage for the Kremlin.
You cannot divorce her detainment from Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Her case is very special because of her celebrity.
This is one of the highest levels of Americans to be in foreign custody
since the Cold War.
It is also a terrible message
to bring some forbidden essences to this country,
and it is prosecuted by Russian laws.
In countries where the US has a military presence,
military force to retrieve hostages is an option.
And implementing economic sanctions
is an effective strategy against rogue states who take hostages.
But with global superpowers like Russia,
those solutions are less likely to work.
There are limits to the ways in which
Western countries can punish Russia,
and we’ve seen pretty much the maximum of that type of punishment
since the war in Ukraine started.
For Russia and other powerful countries,
wrongful detainment is one way to negotiate
freeing their own criminals detained abroad.
The notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout,
known as the “Merchant of Death.”
The US is reportedly negotiating the release of
Americans Brittney Griner and retired Marine Paul Whelan
in exchange for Bout.
The release of people who are high-level international criminals,
take that of Viktor Bout, it bothers me.
It bothers me that it hurts some of our efforts to bring justice to bear
wherever the crime may have been committed
if it’s harming the American people.
Another superpower, China, has also engaged in this tactic.
In 2018, the CFO of Chinese telecom giant Huawei,
Meng Wanzhou, was arrested in Canada.
She and the Chinese tech giant face a number of charges,
including bank fraud, trade secrets theft,
and sanctions violations.
Shortly after her arrest,
two Canadian citizens working in China,
Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor,
were detained for spying on the Chinese government.
It was exceptionally clear from the start
that the two Michaels were being held in a tit-for-tat situation
for leverage with the Canadian government.
There’s now a fear that
as hostage-taking is adopted by more powerful countries,
it can bring an end to the international way of life
that defines our modern world.
If states like Russia and China
continue using their criminal justice system
to take foreigners hostage,
they are demonstrating that they are not constrained
by international norms and international law.
In 2022, the Biden administration declared a national emergency
over hostage-taking by foreign states.
This is something the president and our national security team
are focused on every single day.
But the US is not just a victim.
America has its own history of detaining foreign citizens.
Guantanamo Bay certainly undermines the United States’ moral credibility
when it comes to a whole range of things,
including negotiating for hostages.
With increased tensions among global superpowers,
hostage-taking might only be solved by a united front.
I think that the democratic targets of hostage diplomacy
should be working together to stamp out this trend.
Until we come up with a framework
that makes it unattractive for foreign governments to do this,
people will rot in jails around the world for years on end.