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Welcome to the watch floor. I'm Sarah Adams. Today, we're discussing hostage diplomacy. Not in
some sort of abstract terms, but we're going to talk about the human lives affected by this. And
of course, we're talking about American lives. And then we're going to walk through some of the
carrots and the sticks our government has to bring them home and to prevent this from even happening
to begin with.
When we hear about hostages, we think about criminal gangs and kidnappings. A lot of people
don't think about the fact nation states and their proxies are doing this. And when they're doing
this, it's for a reason. It's for hostage diplomacy. Over 80% of Americans held abroad by the states
in this case aren't charged with any legitimate crimes. They are being used as leverage against our
government into polar government into different type of agreements and negotiations. And it really
puts our government at a weak starting point. And there needs to be more done. So countries don't
think they can just take advantage of us in this situation. You know, we need to have a harder line
when it comes to the wrongful detainment of Americans. It's really interesting. Our government
isn't very forthcoming with the American public as to just how many Americans are wrongfully or unjustly
detained overseas. So we actually have to go to other organizations who track this and they
track this through relationships with the families of those detained. So it's a very, very frustrating
thing. It's not a lot of like clear, transparent negotiations going on. There are times we won't even
hear an Americans held hostage for years because officials within the state department will tell those
families, hey, it's not going to help in our negotiations. If you put up publicly that you loved one
is detained, right? We had Kyla Mueller's family bring this up. A lot of families have complained
about this. So when we talk about tracking a really great organization is the James Foley foundation,
you know, James was a reporter. He actually came to Benghazi after attacks and he did an interview
on the ground with Ahmed Abu Qatala that ended up being the terrorist, the US government framed
as a mastermind of our attacks. Unfortunately, he went, you know, and did reporting up in the,
you know, the Syria region and then he ended up sadly being beheaded by ISIS. So his family,
you know, put this foundation together to really work through some of these wrongful detainments
of Americans and to help other families. So according to them right now, they were at least 41
Americans held in these circumstances. And when I say these circumstances, I'm saying basically by
foreign governments abroad. I mean, this is a crazy thing, you know, when we're supposed to be the
top of the food chain and all these governments can just swoop in and hold Americans hostage without
real criminal prosecutions. Now historically, you know, there's some states that have been known for
doing this. Iran's a really great example in North Korea. And then some proxy actors who now,
unfortunately, have their own states, the Haqqani network being an excellent example of this.
And they have used the detention of Americans to extract consentions from our country. Those
can be diplomatic, economic, security related. I mean, with the Haqqani's, a lot was to bring in
more money. And to get tariffs released on a lot of time, the tariffs were released, as you know,
from Guantanamo Bay. I mean, a really great example is ahead right now of Taliban's intelligence
service was seek. He wasn't Gitmo and the insane part is he's also currently involved with the
detention of Americans, including he had direct involvement in the detention of Dennis Cole.
American Dennis Coil has been taken hostage by the Taliban for almost a year now. His
family has been speaking out, Molly Long went on news nation last week to ask for some more
public attention to this case. What is your administration doing to get him home in?
Will you give me the name? Dennis Coil. Okay. If you will, you give me some information. I'll
take care of that. I know that your administration is working on it. I know they are, but I could
do some things on the internet that are pretty. Do you have any response or message to the Taliban
for who continues to hold him for no crime for simply? Well, I'm not happy about them holding
anybody, and especially if he's not guilty of anything, and it sounds, I mean, from what I've
heard, and again, I'm not that familiar with it like you are, but I will certainly take a very
strong position on it. And the Haqqani family, specifically Sirajid in Haqqani, had direct
involvement in the current detention of American Makhmet Shahabibi. So when you allow them to do this
year after year after year, they don't stop this practice. They just keep taking advantage of it.
And as you know, now the Haqqani network runs a huge part of the Taliban government. They actually
run the whole entire Ministry of Interior. And so we're going to keep getting into these situations
because we are negotiating with them and allowing these to occur. We have not done a red line.
And they know they benefit from doing this to Americans. Now, when we talk about the two Americans
in Afghanistan, you know, I've long advocated for, you know, Makhmet Shahabibi. You know, I've worked
on his case for the last couple of years because it was really interesting. So the Taliban captured
Haqqani and then they handed him over to al-Qaeda. And what they do is they go tell our government,
we don't know what happened with him. He wasn't in our detention. We don't know where he is. We don't
even know if he's alive. And then our government parrots that. They even compared it to people he
was close to. We remain deeply concerned about the well-being of Makhmet Haqqani and other Americans
still detained in Afghanistan. The safety and security of Americans abroad remains a highest
priority of this State Department. And we are working tirelessly to bring Americans home.
In addition. And so I found that very frustrating, you know, so we spend a lot of time advocating
for Haqqani, you know, checking on his status and his welfare because unfortunately he's in a
situation where he's not just being held. He's actually being tortured. And then there's a host
of other problems that you can imagine when you're in detention for as long as he's been,
which has been over a couple of years now, you know, you don't get proper nutrition. You know,
that affects how your organs operate. Just so many different problems that can occur. So,
you know, we're pushing a lot to bring him home because he really is in a situation where his
health has deteriorated a lot. And a person can only do torture for so long. And I know it's not
the best way to put it, but you know, I just want to keep it simple. We don't want to kind of
say things that could harm the family or upset the family in any way. And then we brought up
Dennis Cole. Now the interesting thing is I knew Dennis Cole was detained, you know, in Afghanistan
all year, but there really wasn't any kind of outward discussion by our government, but he was
captured. There weren't really requests until just recently in the last few weeks to release him,
right? So completely ignoring the issue for an entire year. I believe was again pressure,
probably in the family to keep it quiet. So it's a frustrating thing when you look at it because
if you notice this year, our government went very strong on hostages in Gaza, not just Americans,
any hostage in Gaza. And then we saw them actually do operations to go for Americans held in
Venezuela, but for some reason, the Americans in Afghanistan are completely ignored as we give
the Taliban hundreds of millions of dollars a month. So we're paying them. And then they're holding
Americans as hostage to continue engagements with us. It's the craziest thing. I mean, this is
what terrorists organizations do, unfortunately. Obviously, I spent a lot of time in Afghanistan,
but there is a developing story that we have to talk about because it's a very frustrating
situation. I don't know if you've seen this. We have these two pilots. They're being held in Guinea.
Now, they're not being held by a terrorist organization. They're being held, you know, by the
country. The country is a little bit more of like a military controlled institution, but again,
they're not in some criminals hands or they're not in some terrorist hideout. They're being held
by the government. I mean, this has been over a month. We're scared. Mr. Chump, can you please come
down here and get us out of here? Two pilots, including one from New Jersey, jailed in a West African
country for almost six weeks. And they tell CBS News New York that it happened when they landed to
refuel Christine Sloan spoke with the two men on the phone.
Uing resident Fabio Espinal Nunez has years of experience as a pilot, but the 33-year-old tells us
nothing could prepare him for the terrifying ordeal around six weeks ago when the Republic of Guinea
military forced its way on the plane. He and co-pilot, Brad Schlanker, had landed in the West
African nation in order to refuel. There were around a hundred army people and they were pointing
AK-47s at us and talking in French, which we do not know, almost screaming in French.
Nunez and Schlanker speaking to us on the phone from the prison there being held in Guinea,
describing what sounds like a scene out of a movie.
By around four to five heavenly armored vehicles, pointing guns at us and saying that we need to go
to the ground, we've got the transcripts of the radio transmissions, all clearly revealing the
fact that we were innocent and pregnant.
Nunez was flying a Brazilian family from Suriname to Dubai on a private plane.
The flight log given to us shows they had clearance to land, but the government charging them
with violating Ghanaian airspace. I want to walk through what actually happened here because
it's starting to look like hostage diplomacy. So in late December, we had two US pilots.
One is Fabio Nunez and he's from New Jersey and the other is Brad Schlanker and he's from Illinois.
So they were operating a Gulf Stream and they were moving a Brazilian family from Suriname to Dubai
and they were stopping in Guinea for just one of your standard routine visits to get gas,
right? You're refueling your jet, very, very simple. So they put in the flight documentation
they put in the paperwork to obviously have approvals to land, they request the clearances to
come into Guinea and they truly believed we have authorization to land, do this refueling trip,
you know, and be on our way. This is a standard practice as these planes are flying all over the
world. This isn't even a situation where I had a friend, he was on a flight and they actually had
to divert the flight. I believe it was a mechanical issue. So he ended up in a not so friendly
country and the authorities did come on the plane and they took them off because he was an
American and he did spend a few days being detained and interrogated and again that was a situation
where that plane never should have been there. Right here, this plane planned to be in this location
to refuel. So I want you to keep that in mind. They didn't just go into an area they shouldn't
have been in. What happened is they touched down to refuel and instead of a refueling truck
come up, they were surrounded by guinean forces, right? I mean, they had weapons pointed at them.
I mean, this was like a military operation, you know, around their plane. You know, when you talk
to people on the ground, you know, they say it was, you know, a very large contingent who met the
plane. So this is very concerning. This is something you would do if like a terrorist
was landing on your soil, right? So obviously what they said to the pilots is you do not have
proper authorization to land in Guinea. Again, now this is a claim that's obviously being
disputed. I mean, these pilots do this every single day. You know, there's a lot of different
kind of bureaucratic steps you have to go through, you know, while you're flying between different
airports, stopping for refueling, etc. I mean, it's just like, it's just the common thing you do
all the time. It's like, it's habits like riding a bike. The case could have just been solved quickly,
right? A review of the paperwork and then figure out what happened. Was it a bureaucratic error?
Like, what weren't wrong? But that's not what happened. And then it's now becoming like
geopolitical friction because they are still like wrongfully being held. And now it's February.
So this is an insane thing to be held this long for refueling stuff. We have an issue where
obviously countries control the airspace above them, right? I mean, that's very simple to understand.
And then unauthorized entry, of course, can be criminalized. Now, in the aviation space,
there are so many layers of coordination to prevent an issue like this from occurring.
You have dispatch filings. Regional air traffic control is involved. You have diplomatic
overflight permissions. And then, of course, you know, there's a ground handler component to this.
So when something breaks down in this chain, right, it's bureaucratic, or you really just had
some sort of accidental miscommunication, or there is something politically sensitive going on,
and you had no idea, and you had no shot, even if you did everything correctly. And we're all
kind of sitting back and being like, well, what is it? Which one is the issue? So the lawyers have
a legal team, and they've pursued their case through, you know, guineas, you know, official
legal system, because they are detained. You know, first, it was approved that they would get bail.
Well, that unfortunately didn't materialize. So we have a situation here. It's not like
everything separate. It's not like the judiciary's separate from kind of like this military
run government. They get to exert control on it. And that's what appears to be happening in this
case. Again, we're not getting a lot of clear answers as to why they couldn't even at least have
bail. Another thing is state department has acknowledged the case, and they have said, oh yeah,
you know, we have consular visits, and we're involved in it from like our consular section.
You know, as we know, that's not the same as having a high level representative, right,
like your secretary or your state involved in this, because the consular section doesn't have
this type of leverage that a cabinet member has. So a lot of people are like, let's not just rely
on the efficacy to solve this. Like, why is this not going, you know, up the chain of command,
and somebody getting involved, you know, in a more aggressive way? Now, here's something that's
the truth. Four nationals, particularly Americans, have diplomatic street value. I mean,
it's insane way to put it, but it's true. That's why we get used as bargaining chips, even when you
hold an American, their case attracts massive media attention. It generates pressure, and it creates
channels of negotiation that you may never have had as a country, right? You may never have been
able to sit down with our secretary of state or get on a phone call with our vice president,
but in a situation like this, you have some sort of over leverage that might put you into those
brokering situations. And a lot of time our government wants to wait to see where this is escalating.
If we can deal with it just through the legal process, of course we can, but if a country is trying
to pull us into this kind of like diplomatic hostage taking, like we are going to end up going
down that path, even though we didn't want to. So environments where governments face kind of
economic strain, political isolation, and their legitimacy kind of on the world stage just isn't
there. They think, hmm, we could use these Americans as a bargaining chip. We could get a benefit
from this interaction. So families in this case are really, you know, escalating the peel. We're
starting to see a little bit of press talk about it, but not as much as you would think for just
two innocent Americans being detained. And, you know, we do have to get an answer from
Washington, like this looks like bigger than a consular issue. And is it going to become a
diplomatic priority? It should. We do not want this to occur again and again in other countries by,
you know, ignoring it or being soft on it. We want to say there are repercussions if you wrongly
hold Americans hostage. Before we jump into like what carrots and sticks our government has,
one thing I want to bring up that lots of times it gets ignored is when you have an American
wrongly held, there's a whole other piece everybody forgets about. It's the families.
They are so impacted by these detentions. This becomes their entire life to advocate
you know, for their loved one to be released. In some cases, the loved ones, even the burn
winner of the family. And then it obviously causes other issues that you can imagine. I mean,
think about it. You know, you have fathers and in some cases mothers, you know, they're missing
birthdays. Heck, we've had some misweddings and sometimes the hostage diplomacy has gone on so far.
We've had some of these detainees die in custody. You know, we believe Paul Overview is likely deceased.
He had basically gone to Afghanistan and then he traveled over into a zirstand to meet again
Sirajid in Hakan. He ties through a lot of these in that area. You know, just to interview him for
a book and then he got captured. You know, we of course have Bob Levinson, you know, Robert Levinson
held a night ran and it took so long to do the negotiations to free him that he unfortunately
died in prison. Well, this is a massive impact on the families and then these families have
almost become a community. You know, they start making friends with the other detained families
and like, as you can imagine, the impacts are felt by all of them. So I just want to kind of
at least bring up, hey, this isn't just about Americans being used as bargaining chips. There's
a human cost involved here and there are nations damaging, you know, Americans and then Americans'
families back home. You know, I talked to the wife of, you know, one of our American detainees
and you can hear it. Like, she was frustrated. She wasn't getting answers from our government. She
was getting misinformation about even the status of her husband's situation. And I think people
are getting really frustrated because like I said, this is not a clear and transparent process.
They don't do it repeatable, right? I explained to you in some cases, they lean all in and that
hostages the most important person in the universe and other hostages that they don't even say their
names publicly or they don't even announce at all that an American is detained there to begin with.
So just understand there is a piece of it where families are feeling like what would be a moral
injury from the government in the way they're handling these cases. Now if we just look back at
some numbers from 2024, at that time we had 54 Americans, you know, held in this custody or the
state of hostage at least that their families wanted to publicly come out and say, remember there
are families pressured not to say anything. So the numbers aren't always exactly accurate. But in
that case of the 54, they were in 17 different countries. So it's not like two or three countries,
use Americans for hostage diplomacy. We're talking about over a dozen. So this is a problem that's
happened again and again and again and we keep allowing it to occur. You know, another stark fact
from this is when an American gets held in one of these situations by a nation state,
there's not really a criminal prosecution or a legitimate means to hold them on average. They're
spending six years in detention, six years. Now think about it when you're kind of older and
elderly. You don't want these hostages there in their 60s and 70s and then you're going into
these detentions in third world countries, you know, with out proper food, medical care and really
access to consular services. I mean, I can tell you, Habibi has not had any consular visits from
the US government. That's a long time to sustain yourself and to be in the situation where
you don't know if people on the outside are advocating for you. You don't have access to the press.
You know, you're staying strong, but there are times where you're losing hope. It's a very frustrating
situation to be in. You know, so what is the US government actually do when we have Americans held
abroad? I want to talk a little bit about it as kind of this care and stick phenomenon, but first
I want to talk about this legal framework that has been put in place to help and then a follow-on
executive order. So we have the Robert Levinson. I told you, he goes by Bob, you know, he was held
in Iranian custody, the Robert Levinson hostage recovery and hostage taking accountability act.
So in this case, it allows the Secretary of State to mark a rubio to officially designate a
detain American as wrongfully detained. You know, that is a critical mandate that triggers then
high level US engagement. So once you say, yep, they're officially wrongfully detained,
you can get cabinet level individuals involved in negotiating their release. So when you have
family, that's the designation you want, right? Because you want your case at the highest and top
levels of the US government. You want their eyes and their effort on it. They need to be invested,
of course, in getting your loved one released. Now the other legal framework put into place is
really interesting. So it was September 5, 2025 and now President Donald Trump signed an executive
order and it elevated it up his step. So we said how you get labeled a wrongful detainee. Well,
he took it to another level and he said, hey, how about we just designate people, state sponsors
of wrongful detention so a country can be holding an American and get this designation. So I'm going
to walk through a little bit of how these work. So when we talk carrots, that's more US policy.
So there's like quiet diplomacy, third party negotiations, you know, obviously like a cutter
and sawty sometimes takes the lead in some of these cases, you know, to do the negotiations to
get Americans released. We have humanitarian engagement, even offers of aid. Like sometimes
it looks like an American was free to know money past hands, but in a large number of cases,
like a big chunk of money will be handed to an NGO or those type of things. So there are things
that happen behind the scenes that really the public was never made of aware of, but a lot of money
happens to move in these cases. And then the last one is obviously again that consular access,
obviously our embassies abroad will say, you know, we want access to the detainee. We want to
bring in lawyers for the detainee. We want to be part of the legal process, you know, to support
this detainee. And in a lot of cases, like I said, they're being held hostage and they really do
need that extra legal support. So when we talk about kind of those carrots, all that is to really
incentivize a country, you know, to release the American who's held without any sort of conflict.
It's really almost all quiet behind the scenes. You know, this isn't on the CNN ticker. It's like,
let's see what we can do quietly to resolve this issue, you know, free the American and move on
from it. Of course, not everything stays at that level and you have to use sticks. So of course,
this new executive order is a stick. Now, when you have sticks and under this executive order,
you can do these things. That means you can sanction a country, individuals, organizations in the
country for wrongfully holding Americans. You can restrict visas for them, right? So you can say,
none of your elites get visas. You can say, oh, none of your children can have visas to US
universities. That is an option. They don't ever employ it, but it's an option. You can do export
controls, right? You can affect the economies of these locations and then diplomatic pressure
increases dramatically. Now, when this occurs and once we get into this phase, if you do release the
American, you can then roll back and not be like the state designated issue. So it's not like you
get a designation that lasts forever like, you know, a tear scoop could be designated and then it
could take a really long time until you roll that back if ever. In this case, if you release the American
and you do the negotiations, you can roll it back. But, you know, one thing we find frustrating is,
okay, you have these sticks, especially under this executive order. Why aren't you using them
against the Taliban? You can cut US funding to the Taliban, right? We fund them humanitarian
dollars and we fund them counter-terrorism dollars, right? You can end both buckets. You have the
ability to affect the travel of senior Taliban leaders, right? You can go to the UN and you can
go to the Security Council and say, hey, I know we gave approvals for these few members of the
Taliban to travel, but let's now restrict that, you know, because they're holding Americans hostage.
That is an opportunity we have. You can put sanctions against them. The crazy part is a lot of
senior Taliban leaders have sanctions and even the US government have circumvented those sanctions
to get them funds. So, while we have these, like, this act and then this executive order in place
that really could be affecting these issues and this hostage diplomacy, we're not using them
in every case and it's really interesting and it's leading to a lot of people to say, what
is different about the Taliban, right? Like, who in the White House is saying, no, no, no, don't use this
executive order against the Taliban because something like that is happening and a lot of people are
asking a lot of questions about it and they're actually very concerned that there's different
rules in place and for some reason the Taliban is getting a pass at harming Americans and remember
in this case the Taliban even handed an American over to al-Qaeda to torture. Like, that is a
level that should be a red line for all of us and there's such little advocacy to do anything
about this. I want to just quickly go through a few more of the Americans held overseas and just
give their locations. So, we have Alina Lopez, she was detained since 2017 in Cuba. We have
Chuck Zimmerman, he's been detained since June 2025 in Russia. We have Reza Valeste been detained since
2024 in Iran. We have Ferry Singh detained since 2022 in Cambodia and we have Olga Jezler detained since
2022 in Russia. So, this isn't just Ginny, it's not just Afghanistan, we have Cuba, Iran, Russia,
and Cambodia. In each of those names doesn't just represent this person stuck in this insane
world of hostage diplomacy but their families who are impacted, they're sitting there by their
phones awaiting answers, they do not know how their loved one is doing, it's a very frustrating
thing. So, hostage diplomacy rarely gets any sort of headlines but these are real humans, real
Americans caught in the crossfire and today we walk through some of the personal stories because
I told you there's over 40 Americans held by nation states. There's a lot of people needing help
and a lot of families out there just advocating for a voice and saying, hey, my loved ones detained
too, you know, like bring them home and that's where we need to be, no American should be used in
this ridiculous chessboard, you know, of world diplomacy and it's time to bring them all home.
Thanks for tuning in.
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The Watch Floor with Sarah Adams
