WASHINGTON (Middle East Eye) – Relatives of U.S. nationals detained in Saudi Arabia and Egypt were not invited to attend a recent call with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, according to a report by The Guardian, raising concerns they are being sidelined ahead of President Joe Biden’s trip to the Middle East later this month.
Blinken held a call on 22 June with relatives of U.S. nationals who are ‘hostages’ or otherwise ‘wrongfully detained’ in other countries, according to the report. However, Americans detained by Riyadh and Cairo were left out of the call.
One family member of a detainee in Rwanda said that she believed the call was meant for families of individuals who have formally been designated as hostages or wrongfully detained under the Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery and Hostage-Taking Accountability Act, which is meant to give the U.S. government more tools to support the families of hostages.
The call did not include the families of Salah Soltan, an academic and legal U.S. permanent resident and the father of rights activist Mohamed Soltan; or Hosam Khalaf, who are both being held in Egypt.
It also did not include the families of Walid Fitaihi, an American doctor who is under a travel ban in Saudi Arabia; the family of U.S.-Saudi journalist Badr Ibrahim; or the families of Salah al-Haidar and his mother Aziza al-Yousef, a U.S. national and women’s rights activist, who are all barred from leaving Saudi Arabia.
Some family members said being left out of the call made them feel that a political decision was being made to shift focus away from their own families’ plights because of Biden’s upcoming trip.
“The intentional and hypocritical cherry-picking of which ‘wrongful detention’ cases to raise or meet with is infuriating and discriminatory,” one individual, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told The Guardian.
“The willingness of the U.S. to expend its political capital in resolving wrongful detention cases is not consistent and is based on some arbitrary criteria: is your wrongfully detained family member detained in a country that is a foe or ally? Is it a picture-perfect case that is ripe for resolution?”