While Americans celebrated the 248th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, wherein the Founders pledged their "lives, fortunes, and sacred honor" in the pursuit of freedom, Americans today have lost their own freedom at the hands of foreign tyrants.
One of those prisoners is American musician James "Jimmy" Wilgus, who was arrested on Nov. 7, 2016 for a crime he vehemently denies committing, while he was alleged to have been in an area he’d never visited.
Russian police coerced him into signing a document written in Russian that he couldn’t read upon the promise that he’d be released after signing it.
It turned out to be a confession.
Jimmy was tried and convicted in a closed-door proceeding from which both his wife and U.S. Embassy representatives were barred, was found guilty, and is now serving a 12-1/2 year sentence.
Earlier this week Judicial Watch, a Washington, D.C. nonprofit, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. State Department for all records related to why the department hasn’t issued a "wrongful" detention designation for Wilgus.
The organization took this action after the State Department failed to respond to a Feb. 27 request for: "All records related to the detention of American citizen James Vincent Wilgus in Russia."
Judicial Watch added, "This request includes, but is not limited to, all records related to the proposed designation of Mr. Wilgus’ detention as "wrongful" as defined by the Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery and Hostage-Taking Accountability Act and all related records of communication between any official or employee of the Department of State and any other individual or entity."
The Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery and Hostage-Taking Accountability Act was named after a former DEA and FBI agent who’d disappeared in March 2007 in Kish Island, Iran, while on a mission for the CIA.
For a half-century the official U.S. response to the kidnapping or arrest of Americans traveling abroad has been a refusal to negotiate.
The thinking at the time was that negotiation would only encourage more hostage-taking.
Former President Obama violated that policy in 2014 by exchanging five top Taliban commanders for an Army deserter, and later when he sent an aircraft filled with $400 million in cash to Iran in exchange for the release of four U.S. citizens.
Then-candidate Donald Trump, author of "The Art of the Deal," vowed in 2016 to use those skills to free American hostages without making lopsided exchanges, promising after Iran sentenced two Americans for allegedly spying a few weeks before the election "This doesn’t happen if I’m president!"
Three months after his inauguration, the Trump White House negotiated the release of aid worker Aya Hijazi, who’d been held in a Cairo prison for three years.
Other hostage releases include:
- Former CIA officer, Sabrina de Sousa, who was held in Portugal for over 18 months;
- American businesswoman Sandy Phan-Gillis who was released from China; and,
- Caitlin Coleman and her family, discharged by the Haqqani network in the Pakistan-Afghanistan area in 2017.
Yet more U.S. hostages were released from places that uncluded North Korea, Yemen, and Turkey, either by direct engagement or working through foreign proxies.
It was a total reversal of "decades of American hostage policy," according to Joel Simon, author of "We Want to Negotiate: The Secret World of Kidnapping, Hostages, and Ransom."
And the Americans Trump released had something in common with American musician Jimmy Wilgus — they weren’t household names.
The Wilgus family and CBS affiliate WUSA refer to Jimmy as "the forgotten American" — the Russian hostage you never hear about, unlike former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, or WNBA star Brittney Griner.
Whelan was convicted in 2022 on suspicion of spying and sentenced to 16 years, and Gershkovich was arrested last year on espionage charges and is awaiting trial.
Griner was arrested in 2022 for smuggling cannabis — a crime to which she admitted.
In December of that year she was released in exchange for convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, known as the "Merchant of Death."
The Free Jimmy Wilgus team told me, via (Twitter)X this week, that "In a world of 'weaponized politics,' the State Department and Biden administration has run out of ammo for Americans who need them most."
In truth, the Biden administration never had any negotiating ammo to begin with, other than money and a few more imprisoned international terrorists, and despite the semi-celebrity states of Whelan and Gershkovich, there doesn’t seem to be much movement there either.
Maybe, just maybe, Judicial Watch’s lawsuit will light a fire in the State Department.
But either way, the best chance for wrongfully imprisoned U.S. nationals like Jimmy Wilgus will be the guy who wrote the book on making deals.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to Newsmax. He is also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and an enthusiastic Second Amendment supporter. Read Michael Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.
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