Washington — On Saturday, the U.S. is marking its first Nationwide Hostage and Wrongful Detainee Day. Bipartisan laws signed into regulation by President Biden established March 9 as a day of remembrance for People wrongfully held abroad.
The Hostage and Wrongful Detainee Day Act was launched and shepherded by Congress final yr by Reps. Haley Stevens and French Hill, and Sen. Chris Coons. The measure additionally created a nationwide flag for wrongfully detained People and hostages, which was raised for the primary time outdoors the State Division on Friday morning alongside the American flag. The black and yellow flag is harking back to America’s prisoners of struggle and people lacking in motion (POW/MIA) flag.
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A handful of former hostages and their households attended the flag-raising ceremony with State Division officers, standing alongside households of those that stay wrongfully detained overseas.
Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell introduced on the ceremony that the flag will likely be raised outdoors the State Division yearly on March 9. It is going to additionally fly when an American hostage held overseas both dies or returns house.
Camilla Schick
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who claims to hold in his pocket a card with an inventory of the handfuls of People held hostage or unjustly detained, introduced in a video handle earlier than the flag-raising that he has “been capable of cross off 46 names on that checklist” over the previous three years.
“Roger introduced me with my very own card — I am having it laminated. I’ll carry it with me at all times,” Campbell informed the group, referring to Roger Carstens, the particular presidential envoy for hostage affairs.
As he stood beneath the flag, Carstens informed CBS Information that the brand new flag is considered one of solely three allowed to fly outdoors federal buildings, along with the American flag and the POW/MIA flag.
Camilla Schick
The date of March 9 holds particular significance for the household of 1 hostage specifically.
“March 9 is the anniversary of my father’s disappearance,” mentioned Sarah Levinson Moriarty, the daughter of Robert Levinson, who disappeared in Iran in 2007 and have become the longest-held American hostage in historical past. In March 2020, U.S. officers informed the Levinson household that that they had intelligence indicating Robert had died in captivity in Iran.
“It has been a horrific day for us for the previous 17 years. After we had been advocating for today of consciousness and the flag being codified, we took the chance to show a very detrimental day right into a constructive for our nation,” Levinson Moriarty informed CBS Information.
The flag can fly on three days of the yr: Hostage Day on March 9, Flag Day on June 14, and on July 4, in addition to when a hostage dies overseas or comes house, Levinson Moriarty mentioned.
“It might be significant to my father to know his struggling and ache was not in useless, and that our household and our nation have been capable of take what occurred to him and switch it into one thing that may assist others to stop it,” she added.
The flag was designed by David Ewald, a professor on the College of Oregon College of Journalism and Communication. He informed CBS Information that the households of these wrongfully detained had helped create its distinctive yellow and black design, with two rows of tally marks extending throughout its middle evoking the passage of time for detainees. Ewald mentioned he did not suppose he would see the day it flew, describing the flag as an actual “heavy weight.”
After the flag-raising ceremony, various households headed to Lafayette Sq. in entrance of the White Home to stage a sit-in, considered one of a number of protests that the grassroots group Carry Our Households Dwelling has held outdoors the president’s door to strain him to satisfy with them and for the administration to do extra to carry their family members house.
“My dad was taken when [President Biden] was vp,” mentioned Harrison Li, the son of 61-year-old Kai Li, who has been wrongfully detained in China since 2012. “So it is actually been a really very long time.”
Kai Li is considered one of three People wrongfully detained in China, together with Mark Swidan and David Lin. Harrison Li is a co-chair of Carry Our Households Dwelling, which was fashioned quickly after the president met in March 2022 with the mother and father of Trevor Reed, a Marine Corps veteran who was detained in Russia in 2019. Reed was freed in a prisoner swap only a month later, prompting a number of the households of different hostages to wonder if they had been being handled in another way by the U.S. authorities.
“All of the China circumstances have been very, very lengthy circumstances. I do know that there are individuals placing in effort. However I feel the true roadblock is there’s plenty of disagreement and forms,” Harrison Li mentioned. “The sense I get is there’s plenty of people who possibly aren’t so certain on what to do and how you can strategy these circumstances, and that results in plenty of gridlock. That is actually but one more reason why we’re trying to simply meet with the president — he can form of break up that gridlock.”
He continued, “If we’re capable of get Trevor Reed and Brittney Griner out of Russia in the course of the Ukraine scenario, then you may think about getting People out of China at a time, particularly now, once they’re attempting to heat up relations with the U.S.”
Li’s predecessor at Carry Our Households Dwelling was Neda Sharghi, whose brother Emad Shargi was held for years in Iran. Neda Sharghi had buttonholed the president at a crowded White Home Persian New 12 months’s celebration in March 2023, after months of unsuccessful makes an attempt by her household to obtain a gathering. Emad was launched in a prisoner alternate with Iran just a few months later, together with fellow People Siamak Namazi, Morad Tahbaz and two others who wished to stay nameless. The Biden administration additionally helped make out there $6 billion in restricted Iranian oil income to the regime in Tehran.
Households embroiled in the latest hostage disaster — Israeli-People held by the militant group Hamas in Gaza — met Wednesday with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, and with nationwide safety adviser Jake Sullivan. They had been invited to satisfy in individual with the president in December, weeks after their households had been taken hostage — a relatively compressed timeframe that was not misplaced on the households of hostages held in different nations. There are six American twin residents nonetheless unaccounted for, together with Keith Siegel, Sagui Dekel-Chen, Edan Alexander, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Omer Neutra, and Itay Chen. CIA Director Invoice Burns was in Doha on Friday urgent for a Hamas-Israel deal to launch 40 or extra hostages in alternate for a six week cessation in violence and surge of help into Gaza.
A handful of relations of People wrongfully detained overseas had been invited by members of Congress to the president’s State of the Union handle, Thursday, together with Anna Corbett, spouse of Ryan Corbett, who’s at the moment being held by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Harrison Li was additionally invited.
“I wished to attend, hopefully to get out to satisfy individuals who will help me get to the president, and even maybe meet the president himself, nevertheless briefly,” Li informed CBS Information.
The household of Wall Avenue Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich had been additionally visitors of the First Woman on Thursday evening, as President Biden made point out of Evan and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, each detained in Russia.
Paul Whelan has been detained in Russia since 2018. His brother, David Whelan, says that the federal government has made progress in its efforts to cope with American hostages.
“When Paul was arrested there was no infrastructure, no assist for households, there was no overt exercise by the U.S. authorities, by the State Division or anyone. So we have come so removed from that,” David Whelan informed CBS Information. “We’re now beginning to see tangible proof of the U.S. authorities attempting to grapple with this hostage-taking downside.”
Biden has met with the Whelan household twice—in September 2022, and in January.
“I feel that the households of hostages and detainees have the appropriate to request a gathering with the President. I feel that the U.S. Authorities, the State Division and the White Home specifically, ought to take an excellent exhausting take a look at how they deal with household circumstances in another way, as a result of, whether or not they intend to deal with them in another way or not, they’re doing so.”
“On the similar time, and clearly with the privilege of getting had Elizabeth (Paul’s sister) converse to the president twice, I feel Paul’s case is a very good instance of how talking to the President does not really end in somebody coming house.”
“I feel our authorities has at all times mentioned that these kinds of issues are a prime precedence,” Sarah Levinson Moriarty mentioned. “However what higher technique to present it than to really meet with these households, maintain their palms and inform them that the U.S. authorities is doing each potential factor that they will to finish their struggling.”
— Margaret Brennan and Andrew Bast contributed to this report.
