Reporters Demand Clarity On 'Wrongfully Detained' Status Following US-Russia Prisoner Swap

4 months ago

State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller was asked about US citizens detained abroad and the "wrongfully detained" status process.

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Transcript

00:00My question is Russia-adjacent about detainees last week, so if you want to – okay.

00:04Sure.

00:05Sure.

00:06One is there were conflicting characterizations of whether Asukur-Masheva was, in fact, officially

00:09designated as wrongfully detained.

00:11Can you clarify whether she was or not before the release?

00:13She was.

00:14She was designated as wrongfully detained.

00:16When did that happen?

00:17It happened last week, shortly in the days before she was returned home.

00:21Okay.

00:22And the family of Mark Fogle in legal proceedings against this department has argued that had

00:26he been designated as wrongfully detained, it would have also led to his release.

00:30Do you have any comment on that?

00:32So I'm not going to speak to questions that involve ongoing litigation for reasons I think

00:38you can understand, but I will speak to this issue in general.

00:42First of all, with respect to Mark Fogle, we are working to try to secure his release.

00:46We work to try to secure his release as part of this deal, and we're unable to.

00:50But we continue to call for his release and we continue to work to secure his release.

00:55And I think – let me just point to the events of last week to talk about our record,

01:01because I have a number of times stood up here and been pressed why we haven't designated

01:07certain individuals as wrongfully detained.

01:09I think Alex asked me two weeks ago about the wrongful designation of Alsu Kermesheva,

01:13and I think asked me, you know, are we not designating her as wrongfully detained because

01:17she's a woman or because she's a Muslim.

01:18It's obviously not true, as I said at the time.

01:21And the point I made is when we say that we are working to get someone's release,

01:27we mean it.

01:28And our record backs it up.

01:30And sometimes we are working to obtain their release when they have officially received

01:35a wrongful detention determination.

01:39Sometimes there are other individuals who we say we're working to secure their release,

01:43and they never receive that determination.

01:45A great example is Vladimir Karamurza, who was not determined by this department to be

01:48wrongfully detained, but yet we were still able to secure his release last week.

01:53So let me just point to something the Secretary said in the statement he released on Thursday

01:58when this news became public, and that's that he knows – he had a lot of difficult conversations,

02:04as you would imagine, right, with the families of those who have been wrongfully detained

02:07and others who have been detained overseas over the past couple years.

02:11And he can certainly understand that there were times that they worried that our efforts

02:15would not bear fruit.

02:17But we know they never gave up hope, and we didn't give up hope, and we continued to

02:21work to secure all of their release, and that is true with Mark Fogle and that is true for

02:25every American who is wrongfully detained overseas.

02:28I certainly understand, and I'm not a lawyer for the family, that it's not maybe a prerequisite

02:33or a requirement for an American to be released, but it is a fact that three out of the four

02:38Americans in this case were designated as wrongfully detained, and that led to their

02:43release, as was Brittany Greiner.

02:44So just if there's anything else you want to say to the Fogle family at this particular

02:48–

02:49So I would say to the family, as you've heard from others in the Administration, that

02:53we continue to be committed to securing his release, and we continue to work on it.

02:56It's something that we think about every day.

02:58And the same thing that we said to the family of Paul Whelan when Brittany Greiner was returned,

03:03and we had tried to get Paul Whelan out as part of that deal, and it just simply wasn't

03:07– it wasn't on the table.

03:08It wasn't on the table as part of that deal.

03:10And we made clear to Paul, and we made clear to his family that we had not forgotten him

03:15and that we would continue to work on his release, and that was true, and ultimately

03:18we were able to get him home.

03:19The same thing is true with Mark Fogle.

03:21We continue to work on his release.

03:22We really wanted to get him out as part of this deal.

03:24We're not the only party to the deal, right, and we weren't able to do it, but we continue

03:30to work on it.

03:31And just with this question of wrongfully detained, not wrongfully detained, which we

03:36get asked about a lot for very understandable reasons, I would just note that there is a

03:40statutory review that we have to go through that lists certain factors that we have to

03:45apply when making the determination about whether someone is wrongfully detained or

03:50not.

03:51And we go through that, and we have to apply the law rigorously, and that's what we do.

03:54But there are others who, for whatever reason, we have not made the determination at any

03:59one time.

04:00They have not met the statutory criteria.

04:02But if there's someone that we say that we are working to bring home, like Vladimir

04:05Karamazov, we're working to bring him home, and hopefully someday we will.

04:09Why was Karamazov not wrongfully detained?

04:12So as always, I'm not going to speak to the determination with any one individual,

04:17but it's – we have to go – we go through the statutory criteria with all of them and

04:22add all that up and make a determination based on the facts of their case, based on the law

04:26that applies to their case, and based on the requirements of the Levinson Act, does that

04:30all add up to a wrongful determination.

04:32And in the case of Alsu Karmasheva, the statutory review led us to conclude it did.

04:37In the case of Vladimir Karamazov, it led us to conclude that it did not.

04:41That said, we still thought he ought to be released.

04:45We still pressed for his release.

04:46We were still able to get his release.

04:48The question was whether she was designated the day before or the day after, because I

04:53also –

04:54It was sometime last week.

04:55I don't remember.

04:56I don't remember the exact day.

04:57It was sometime last week.

04:58But it did not happen before the decision was announced, right?

04:59I mean, she was released.

05:00But I asked this question last week, and Medant did not have the answer that she was designated.

05:07It happened last week, shortly before her release.

05:09I'm not going to get into any further detail.

Reporters Demand Clarity On 'Wrongfully Detained' Status Following US-Russia Prisoner Swap

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