James Foley’s Brother: The U.S. Could Have Done More for Jim 
 
 By Liz Goodwin 
 
 The brother of American journalist James Foley said Friday morning that the U.S. government could have done more to attempt to free his brother and other American hostages from the Islamic militant group ISIL. 
 
 “There’s more that could have been done directly on Jim’s behalf,” Michael Foley, 38, told Yahoo Global News Anchor Katie Couric in an exclusive interview near his parents’ home in Dover, New Hampshire. “I really, really hope that Jim’s death pushes us to take another look at our approach to terrorist and hostage negotiation.” 
 
 Foley, a 40-year-old journalist who was covering the Syrian conflict for GlobalPost, was kidnapped nearly two years ago near the Syria-Turkey border. ISIL, also called ISIS, released a grisly video of his beheading Tuesday, claiming it killed him in retaliation for U.S. airstrikes in the region. 
 
 But another issue was money. The group had also captured French and Spanish journalists, but freed them after their governments paid ransoms through intermediaries. The U.S. government refused to negotiate or pay the group on behalf of Foley and other American captives. ISIL emailed Michael Foley and demanded 100 million euros—a sum he called “ridiculous”—for his brother’s release. 
 
 “I just feel strongly that more can be done moving forward,” Michael Foley said. 
 
 The Obama administration said this week that it had sent a special military operations force to try to rescue Foley and the other Americans over the summer, but that the mission failed. “I’d like to think it did happen, but I certainly wasn’t aware of it,” Foley said of the failed mission. 
 
 ISIL has threatened to kill another captured American journalist, Steven Sotloff, next. Michael Foley said he hopes the U.S. government does more on his behalf, including considering trading prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. 
 
 “I don't believe ISIL can be contained — containment is not a strategy. We need to recognize that they are a threat and we need to deal with them,” Michael Foley said. 
 
 Michael Foley and his sister Katie, 26, told Couric that condolences have come pouring in from all around the world. Pope Francis called their family yesterday, telling them that James Foley’s death was an act of martyrdom. 
 
 The family briefly had hope that they would be able to negotiate for his release, after an intermediary made contact with ISIL on their behalf. But then the U.S. government began bombing ISIL earlier this month. On August 12, ISIL sent Foley’s parents a “chilling” email saying their son would die to pay for the airstrikes, according to Michael Foley. “I don’t understand where that type of hate could come from,” Katie Foley said. 
 
 The family believes that Foley volunteered to be the first American to be executed. “You can see from the clips from the video that he wasn’t afraid,” Michael Foley said. 
 
 European journalists who were captured by ISIL but later freed told Foley’s family that the journalist made a makeshift board game out of objects they found and even taught his fellow captives Spanish as a way to keep hope alive. 
 
 The U.S. government says they will hunt down and punish Foley’s killers. 
 
 “We will be relentless,” President Barack Obama said this week. “When people harm Americans anywhere, we do what’s necessary to see that justice is done.” 
 
 Foley’s friends have set up a scholarship fund in his name at Marquette University, where he graduated in 1996, for disadvantaged students. 
 
 Watch the Full Interview: ||||| BOSTON, Mass. — American journalist James Foley was murdered by Islamic State militants, who on Aug. 19 publicized the killing in a graphic video uploaded to YouTube. 
 
 On Tuesday, Aug. 12, Foley’s parents received an email from their son’s captors stating that Foley would be “executed.” The Foley family, GlobalPost, government authorities and private security consultants had been investigating Foley’s whereabouts and attempting to secure his release since he was kidnapped on Thanksgiving Day nearly two years ago. 
 
 The terrorist group declared Foley's death would be in retaliation for recent US airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq. 
 
 The Islamic State, which is now holding three American hostages in Syria, has since threatened to kill one of them, freelance reporter Steven Sotloff, if the US continues its bombing campaign in Iraq. 
 
 The Foley family has agreed to release the email from Foley’s captors. GlobalPost has chosen to publish it in full in the interest of transparency and to fully tell Jim's story. We believe the text offers insight into the motivations and tactics of the Islamic State. 
 
 In addition to the extreme views it espouses, the email contains factual inaccuracies. For example, the Foley family was not “given many chances to negotiate” for Jim’s release. After more than a year without contact, the Foleys received their first message from Jim’s captors on Nov. 26, 2013, asking for money, fast. After the militants had proved to the Foleys and investigators that they were in fact holding Jim, they made their sole demand for a ransom of 100 million euros (about $132 million) or the release of unspecified prisoners held by the United States. 
 
 The next time the Foley family heard from the captors was on Aug. 12, 2014. They received this email: 
 
 HOW LONG WILL THE SHEEP FOLLOW THE BLIND SHEPPARD? 
 
 A message to the American government and their sheep like citizens: 
 
 We have left you alone since your disgraceful defeat in Iraq. We did not interfere in your country or attack your citizens while they were safe in their homes despite our capability to do so! 
 
 As for the scum of your society who are held prisoner by us, THEY DARED TO ENTER THE LION’S DEN AND WHERE EATEN! 
 
 You were given many chances to negotiate the release of your people via cash transactions as other governments have accepted, 
 
 We have also offered prisoner exchanges to free the Muslims currently in your detention like our sister Dr Afia Sidiqqi, however you proved very quickly to us that this is NOT what you are interested in. 
 
 You have no motivation to deal with the Muslims except with the language of force, a language you were given in “Arabic translation” when you attempted to occupy the land of Iraq! 
 
 Now you return to bomb the Muslims of Iraq once again, this time resorting to Arial attacks and “proxy armies”, all the while cowardly shying away from a face-to-face confrontation! 
 
 Today our swords are unsheathed towards you, GOVERNMENT AND CITIZENS ALIKE! AND WE WILL NOT STOP UNTILL WE QUENCH OUR THIRST FOR YOUR BLOOD. 
 
 You do not spare our weak, elderly, women or children so we will NOT spare yours! 
 
 You and your citizens will pay the price of your bombings! 
 
 The first of which being the blood of the American citizen, James Foley! 
 
 He will be executed as a DIRECT result of your transgressions towards us! ||||| Up to 20 Western hostages are being held by the jihadi group that beheaded James Foley. 
 
 As well as the journalist Steven Sotloff, who was threatened with beheading by the same man who murdered Foley, Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil) is holding a number of aid workers, thought to include Vanessa Marzullo, 21, and Greta Ramelli, 20, both Italian. 
 
 Three aid workers employed by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) are also being held hostage after they were abducted last October. 
 
 As fears grew that Isil could make good on its threat to murder more hostages, families of those being held defended their loved ones’ decisions to travel to Syria. 
 
 Ms Ramelli’s mother, Antonella, said her daughter had been determined from an early age to look after others, starting by helping out in a retirement home when she was 12. 
 
 Responding to suggestions that she should not have allowed her daughter to travel to Syria, Mrs Ramelli said: “When you hear your daughter say 'Mamma, in that country they are killing children, I must go and help,’ what can you say?” 
 
 “Can you go back on all the teaching and the values you have tried to instill for a lifetime?” she told Prealpina, an Italian newspaper. “Can you change your daughter, who has these values and has strong ideals about solidarity and human empathy?” 
 
 The two women went missing near Aleppo in Syria at the beginning of this month. On Thursday the Italian foreign office declined to comment on whether they were now in the hands of Isil. 
 
 The Red Cross has not released details of the nationality, gender or age of their aid workers currently being held hostage. The three were among a group of seven who were kidnapped, four of whom were released shortly afterwards. 
 
 A spokesman for the charity said: “Intensive efforts are ongoing behind the scenes to secure the release of the remaining three colleagues, through the ICRC’s broad network on the ground. 
 
 "We cannot provide details about this for the sake of the ongoing safety of our colleagues still abducted.” 
 
 Former hostages who had been held with Foley described how he had been singled out for beatings because he was an American. 
 
 Didier Francois, a 53-year-old reporter with the French radio station Europe 1, said Mr Foley was tortured after his captors found pictures on his computer of his brother, who works for the US Air Force. 
 
 Foley was subjected to mock executions, including one in which he was “crucified against a wall”. 
 
 Paying tribute to the American, Mr Francois said: “He was an extraordinary guy — a companion in imprisonment who was very agreeable, very solid.” 
 
 Mr Francois spent eight months held hostage in Syria with Foley, mostly in underground cells with no natural light. 
 
 For two-and-a-half months, Mr Francois was chained to fellow French hostages Nicolas Henin, Edouard Elias, and Pierre Torres. Mr Francois said he had never spoken publicly about Mr Foley or Mr Sotloff before because of threats of reprisals. 
 
 Mr Henin also paid tribute to Mr Foley, saying: “James was a very good friend and a great support. He was always there when you were feeling not so well with some kind words. He managed to make seven months of captivity easier.” 
 
 Mr Henin, however, was sceptical about reports that a group of British jihadists nicknamed “The Beatles” were the prime culprits. “If investigators were to go in that direction, they would be misleading themselves,” he said. 
 
 Jeroen Oerlemans, a Dutch journalist who was held hostage in Syria with a British colleague, John Cantlie, for nine days last year before the two men were freed, said Foley had worked tirelessly trying to secure their release. 
 
 He said: “The colleague with whom I was abducted was good friends with James. When we missed our appointment with him, somewhere in Syria, alarm bells immediately went off for Foley. He pulled back across the border to Turkey, and put all his journalistic contacts gathering information on us.” 
 
 When the two men were freed by opposition forces, he said: “James was the first to hug me. I did not know him, but because he had been so closely involved with our liberation he knew me well.” 
 
 Mr Oerlemans decided Syria was too dangerous to return to, saying: “You must know very well who you go into business with, your contacts must be one hundred per cent reliable. And even then, James was hugely experienced and had those contacts. Yet it happened to him.” ||||| Propaganda video circulated Tuesday claims to show beheading of photojournalist, who went missing in Syria in 2012 
 
 Militants from Islamic State (Isis) claimed to have killed an American journalist long held captive in Syria in retaliation for ongoing US air strikes against its forces in Iraq. 
 
 A propaganda video circulated on Tuesday showed a masked Isis fighter beheading a kneeling man dressed in an orange jumpsuit who is purported to be James Wright Foley, a photojournalist who went missing in Syria in 2012. 
 
 The masked executioner spoke in English, with what sounded like a British accent, and said the slaying came in response to the air strikes ordered by President Barack Obama against Isis 12 days ago. 
 
 Isis, whose chief spokesman came under US state department sanctions on Monday, warned of further revenge – including on another man purported to be a captured US journalist, Steven Sotloff – and in the video the victim was made to read a statement blaming the US for his own murder. 
 
 Foley has been missing in Syria since November 2012, where he went to report on the bloody struggle to overthrow dictator Bashar al-Assad. He was initially thought to have been captured by forces loyal to the Assad regime. 
 
 
 
 Foley’s mother later released a statement saying her son gave his life to expose the suffering of the Syrian people. Diane Foley asked his kidnappers to release their other captives. 
 
 
 
 “He was an extraordinary son, brother, journalist and person,” she said. 
 
 
 
 “We implore the kidnappers to spare the lives of the remaining hostages. Like Jim, they are innocents. They have no control over American government policy in Iraq, Syria or anywhere in the world. 
 
 “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.” 
 
 YouTube took down the gruesome video, but not before it sparked a debate on social media about the ethics of sharing it. 
 
 Philip Hammond, the British foreign secretary, said the video appeared to be genuine, and that the killer could well be a Briton. 
 
 He said that although further analysis would need to be carried out, the man “on the face of it appears to have been a British person” and that this would not be surprising given the “significant number” of Britons fighting with Isis in Syria and Iraq. 
 
 Screengrab from the ISIS video showing the execution of James Foley Photograph: Youtube 
 
 Foley, 40, a former Stars and Stripes reporter, was captured in November 2012 near the Syrian town of Taftanaz. It was not his first detention while reporting: in 2011, he was taken while reporting on the uprising against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Gaddafi’s forces ultimately released him after six weeks in captivity. 
 
 A friend of Foley’s and his fellow captive in Libya, journalist Clare Morgana Gillis, wrote in a 2013 essay that captivity was “the state most violently opposite his nature.” Gillis described Foley as gentle, friendly, courageous and impatient with “anything that slows his forward momentum.” 
 
 
 
 In a January 2013 interview with local television news near her Rochester, New Hampshire home, Foley’s mother Diane said her son was “passionate about covering the story in Syria, passionate about the people there.” 
 
 Caitlin Hayden, the spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said US intelligence was working to determine the authenticity of the video. 
 
 
 
 “If genuine, we are appalled by the brutal murder of an innocent American journalist and we express our deepest condolences to his family and friends,” Hayden said in a statement. 
 
 A day after Obama declared that Iraqi and Kurdish forces backed by US warplanes had broken Isis’ hold on the critical Mosul Dam, US Central Command announced two strikes near it on Monday, to “further expand control of the area.” One strike was said to have destroyed an Isis checkpoint while the other was “not successful.” 
 
 Obama has offered no timeframe for the length of his campaign against Isis. The US military has bombed over 90 targets attributed to Isis, including vehicle convoys, mobile artillery and fixed positions, since 8 August. Most of the strikes have come in the past few days, near the dam. The other strikes have occurred either to blunt an Isis advance on the Kurdish regional capital of Irbil or to lift an Isis siege on Mount Sinjar, where it chased thousands of Iraqi Yazidis whom it threatened to kill unless they converted to Islam. The US considers the siege broken. ||||| share tweet pin email 
 
 James Foley's parents, John and Diane Foley, say that before their son was killed by ISIS they had hoped they could negotiate with the terrorist group, and promise that their son's legacy will live on. 
 
 "Jim's strength and love was the answer to prayer...Jim will live on," the Foleys told TODAY's Tamron Hall Friday. 
 
 ISIS militants have claimed responsibility for executing the American photojournalist. The group sent Foley's parents an email on Aug. 12, stating that their son would be "executed." The email was the first communication the Foleys had received from their son's captors since December of 2013, which initially left them hopeful they could find a way to bring him home safely. 
 
 
 
 Today John and Diane Foley 
 
 "I actually was excited to see an email despite the conclusion that they would execute Jim,'' his father said. "We underestimated that point. I did not realize how brutal they were, and I actually hoped we could engage in negotiations with them if they were willing to send any sort of communication because we had none prior." 
 
 A French journalist who was released in April and shared a cell with Foley spoke about his courage and noted how he was treated more harshly because he was American. 
 
 "Jim's courage and particularly his compassion and love in that box, which they called it, was an answer to prayer,'' his mother said. "We had so many people praying for Jimmy. We had begged for prayer, but we didn't need to." 
 
 
 
 The family has received a call from Pope Francis comforting them for their loss. 
 
 "Pope Francis was so dear because he is grieving himself having just lost three members of his family and (with) his nephew critically ill,'' Diane said. "Here in the midst of his tremendous grief, he took the time to call. He was just so kind." 
 
 Follow TODAY.com writer Scott Stump on Twitter and Google+.
– James Foley's Catholic parents received a call from Pope Francis himself yesterday to console them on the gruesome death of their son. The pontiff was "very compassionate, very loving," and spoke to the New Hampshire couple through a translator for around 20 minutes, a family friend tells the New York Daily News. Meanwhile, Foley's former employer, GlobalPost, has released the full text of the last email sent to Foley's parents by his captors, with the family's permission. "You and your citizens will pay the price of your bombings!" the Aug. 12 message declares, addressing both his parents and the US government. "Now you return to bomb the Muslims of Iraq once again, this time resorting to Arial (sic) attacks and 'proxy armies,' all the while cowardly shying away from a face-to-face confrontation!" It alleges that the US passed up chances to pay a ransom or swap prisoners, and ends by saying that Foley will be executed "as a DIRECT result of your transgressions towards us!" Read it in full here. In other developments: Other foreigners held alongside Foley says ISIS militants, including British-accented executioner "John the Jihadi," treated the captured journalist more harshly than other captives, the Washington Post reports. "He was some kind of scapegoat," a captured French journalist who's since been released tells the BBC. "And the kidnappers knew that his brother was in the US Air Force. He became the whipping-boy of the jailers." He says militants performed mock executions on Foley, and he witnessed them force him to "pose as if he was being crucified against a wall." The militants have threatened to execute captive US journalist Steven Sotloff next, but he is just one of up to 20 Westerners believed to be ISIS captives, reports the Telegraph. They are believed to include Vanessa Marzullo, 21, and Greta Ramelli, 20, two Italian aid workers who vanished in Syria earlier this month, as well as three Red Cross workers seized last fall. Senior Pentagon officials describe ISIS as a group with an "apocalyptic, end-of-days strategic vision which will eventually have to be defeated"—but they warn that fighting the group effectively will have to involve strikes on Syria. Senior British officials say the country's military is likely to end up joining any American military action against the group, the Guardian reports.