“Today we are bringing home another American citizen, big thing, very big,” Trump said at the beginning of a coronavirus task force briefing. Trump also said that the US is working hard to secure the release American journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared in Syria in 2012. Separately, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that Iran has released American Mike White on medical furlough.
The President has made the release of American hostages overseas a priority, bringing detained US citizens home from Afghanistan, North Korea, Egypt,
Iran and Turkey. The elevation of Robert O’Brien from Trump’s envoy for hostage negotiations to his national security adviser in September 2019 has made the issue even more prominent.
Trump expressed appreciation to the Lebanese government. “They worked with us and we are very proud of his family… and they are thrilled,” he said.
Pompeo said Fakhoury’s release “comes as a relief to those who have followed the case with grave concern. We are relieved to be able to welcome him back home.”
Fakhoury’s release on Tuesday drew condemnation in Lebanon, where his work running the Khiam prison during Israel’s occupation of the country in the early 1980s, earned him the nickname “the butcher of Khiam.”
Trump also said that the US is “working very hard with Syria” to free Tice, adding that they have recently sent a letter to Syria about the former Marine who was working as a freelance journalist when he was kidnapped.
“We’re doing the best we can, so Syria, please work with us. We would appreciate you letting him out,” he said. He later tempered expectations about Tice, telling CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that “I’m not confirming he’s alive.”
Pompeo used the opportunity to renew his calls for Iran to release other detained Americans. Last week, Pompeo called on Tehran to release detained Americans after officials there released 70,000 prisoners because of coronavirus concerns. “Their detention amid increasingly deteriorating conditions defies basic human decency,” Pompeo said March 10.
On Thursday, he pushed again.
“We again call on the Iranian government to immediately release on humanitarian grounds Morad Tahbaz, Baquer Namazi, and Siamak Namazi,” he said in his statement. “We also ask the regime to honor the commitment it made to work with the United States for the return of
Robert Levinson,” the longest-held American prisoner in Iran.
Also Thursday, he cited the threat from the novel coronavirus as he called on Venezuela to release five American citizens and one US resident who work for the energy company Citgo “who are currently languishing in the notorious Helicoide prison in Caracas.”