James Foley (journalist): Difference between revisions

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Revision as of 16:46, 26 August 2014 editJclinger7 (talk \| contribs)12 edits foley's killer has been named by the times of isreal as Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary← Previous edit		Revision as of 16:48, 26 August 2014 edit undoJclinger7 (talk \| contribs)12 editsm →References: James Foley's killer named by times of isrealNext edit →
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	==References==		==References==
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			http://www.timesofisrael.com/james-foley-executioner-said-identified-as-british-rapper/#!

	== External links ==		== External links ==

Revision as of 16:48, 26 August 2014

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James Foley
File:James Foley in 2011.jpgFoley in 2011
Born	James Wright Foley (1973-10-18)October 18, 1973 Rochester, New Hampshire, U.S.
Died	August 19, 2014(2014-08-19) (aged 40) Syro-Arabian desert
Cause of death	Beheading
Nationality	American
Other names	Jim Foley
Alma mater	Marquette University University of Massachusetts Amherst Medill School of Journalism
Occupation	Journalist
Employer	Freelancer
Parent(s)	John and Diane Foley

James Wright Foley (October 18, 1973 – August 19, 2014) was an American freelance journalist and photojournalist who was covering the Syrian Civil War when he was abducted on November 22, 2012 in northwestern Syria. He is reportedly the first American citizen killed by the self-proclaimed Islamic State (I.S.), an al-Qaeda spinoff, also referred to as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, ISIS, or ISIL.

Foley was a teacher before he switched to journalism. In 2009 he worked on USAID-funded development projects in Iraq, and later became an embedded journalist with U.S. troops there. In 2011 he joined the U.S. military newspaper Stars and Stripes in Afghanistan. Later that year, working for GlobalPost in Libya, he was captured by forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi and held for 44 days. When captured in Syria the following year, he was working for Agence France-Presse and GlobalPost.

Early life and education

Foley was a native of Rochester, New Hampshire, and attended Kingswood Regional High School in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. He was the oldest of five children born to John and Diane Foley. He was a Catholic.

Foley graduated from Marquette University, a private, Jesuit Catholic institution, in 1996, from the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2003, and from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in 2008.

Career

Foley began his career as a teacher in Arizona, Massachusetts, and Chicago for Teach For America (TFA). In the mid-2000s he changed careers to photojournalism. In 2009, Foley worked for USAID-funded development projects in Baghdad, Iraq. He helped organize conferences and training seminars for a program designed to rebuild Iraq’s civil service, crippled by decades of isolation and autocratic administration. In 2010 he left Iraq and applied for military embed-journalist accommodation status in Afghanistan to become a freelance journalist. He was an embedded journalist with US troops in Iraq, where his brother was serving as an officer in the United States Air Force. In January 2011 he joined Stars and Stripes in Afghanistan, the official newspaper of the United States Armed Forces, connected with the Department of Defense but editorially separate. But in March 2011, he was fired from that newspaper for possession of marijuana.

In 2011, while working for GlobalPost, Foley went to Libya to cover the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi, embedding himself with rebel fighters (Libyan Civil War).

Libya capture ordeal in 2011

In April 2011, Foley and three other journalists were detained near Brega, Libya, by forces loyal to Gaddafi; fellow photojournalist Anton Hammerl was killed in the attack in which Foley was captured. Foley was released from jail 44 days later He returned to Milwaukee to thank the community for praying for his safe return. In an interview, Foley said "You go through different emotions when you're in captivity... These weird extreme ideas of where you are based on this capture. You don't want to be defined as that guy who got captured in 2011. I believe front line journalism is important we can't tell the world how bad it might be." He also wrote an article for Marquette Magazine about how rosary prayers helped get him through his captivity. His experience of being captured did not deter him, he quickly returned to Libya, and was at the scene of Muammar Gaddafi’s capture with GlobalPost correspondent Tracey Shelton on October 20, 2011.

Foley continued working as a freelancer for GlobalPost and other media outlets like Agence France-Presse during the Syrian Civil War.

Kidnapping and death

Foley was kidnapped with his translator, in northwestern Syria on his way to the Turkish border on November 22, 2012. The translator was later released.

Sources close to the family said that at one point they believed he was kidnapped by Shabiha militia, a group loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad, and he was held in a Syrian Air Force Intelligence complex in Damascus.

According to Syrian sources, who have worked previously to locate and rescue kidnapped journalists in Syria, Foley was most likely used by another guerrilla group as a token of allegiance to ISIS. According to those sources, Foley was in the hands of the Dawood Bridgade, a group that was originally aligned with relatively moderate opposition groups such as the Free Syrian Army, but recently pledged allegiance to ISIS. The Dawood Bridgade joined in July 2014 IS.

Foley's captors demanded a 100 million euros in ransom (approximately 132 million US dollars) from Foley's family, GlobalPost, his employer, and the US for his release during negotiations from November to December 2013. The chief executive officer of GlobalPost, Philip Balboni, stated that the company spent millions on efforts to bring Foley home, including hiring an international security firm. In September 2013 the firm was able to locate Foley and had been able to follow his locations. He had moved many times during his captivity.

In July 2014, U.S. President Barack Obama authorized a “substantial and complex” rescue operation after US intelligence agencies said a “broad collection of intelligence” led to believe that the hostages were being held at a specific location in Syria. However, the mission failed because the hostages had been moved. The operation involved special operations forces from multiple branches of the military, including the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, helicopters, fixed wing aircraft and drones. When US Delta Force commandos landed in the eastern Syrian city of Raqqa, they were met with gunfire and it became apparent the hostages had been moved. The special forces engaged in a firefight in which IS suffered casualties and American forces suffered a single minor injury. Foley and the other hostages were not located. The operation was only de-classified after Foley's death. It represented the first confirmation of U.S. troops operating on the ground within Syria during the Syrian Civil War.

On August 12, 2014, Foley's parents received an email from his captors taking issue with the U.S. government, saying it had refused to pay ransoms, unlike other governments, refused to negotiate prisoner exchanges, and "had no motivation to deal with the Muslims except through force". The email's authors said they had left the U.S. alone since its "disgraceful defeat in Iraq," but would avenge the U.S. bombings, initially with the death of Foley. John Foley, the father of James, said he didn't realize how brutal his captors were. Even after receiving the email, he held out hope his son's release could still be negotiated. The family had reportedly been preparing to break U.S. law to pay a ransom (undisclosed amount) for his release.

Foley's whereabouts were unknown to most until August 19, 2014, when IS uploaded to YouTube a video entitled ″A Message to America″. Though quickly deleted, it continued to circulate widely on other sites and was widly disseminated on social media. The video appears to have been filmed in several separate takes. The video does not show the actual moment of Foley’s decapitation, this marks it out from other, less sophisticated predecessors beheading videos and made it more distributable. After his corpse is shown, the masked man reveals that IS is holding another American journalist, Time magazine contributor Steven Joel Sotloff, and said that he would be killed if U.S. President Obama did not halt air strikes against IS. The video was shot at an unknown desert location, and media sources gave the name Jihadi John to the masked man who carried out the killing and made the threats.

On August 19, 2014, Foley's family confirmed his death. On August 20, 2014, the United States National Security Council confirmed that the video was authentic. Because the video fades out shortly after a calm Foley has the knife drawn across his neck several times without shedding blood, then skips to his corpse, some forensics analysts have suggested that the execution scene in the video could have been staged, with his death occurring off-camera at a later time, perhaps at the hands of a different executioner. The same analyst said "No one is disputing that at some point an execution occurred."

His mother, Diane Foley, posted on the "Free James Foley" page on Facebook: "We have never been prouder of our son Jim, he gave his life trying to expose the world to the suffering of the Syrian people". Pope Francis called Foley's family to express his condolences. Foley's brother said he believed the U.S. government could have done more to save James during hostage negotiations, due to the government's policy of not paying ransom and other unspecified issues.

The U.S. Justice Department is pursuing a criminal investigation into the beheading death of James Foley, Attorney General Eric H. Holder announced on August 21: “We will not forget what happened and people will be held accountable, one way or the other”.

According to research on August 23 by citizen investigative journalist Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat, analyzing video and satellite data, James Foley was executed in a spot in the hills south of the Syrian city Raqqa whose precise co-ordinates he has calculated.

Honors

On August 22, 2014, Indian sand artist Sudarsan Pattnaik created a sculpture depicting the face of Foley, made of four tons of sand on the beach of Puri city in the eastern province of Odisha. The sculpture, with a message reading "Don't kill innocents!", drew a sizeable crowd on the beach.

The James Foley Scholarship in the J. William and Mary Diederich College of Communication was established at Marquette University in his honor.