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- [00:00]
Sarah Adams
Welcome to the watch floor. I'm Sarah Adams. Today we're discussing hostage diplomacy. Not in some sort of abstract terms, but we're going to talk about the human lives affected by this. And of course, we're talking about American lives. And then we're going to walk through some of the carrots and the sticks our government has to bring them home and to prevent this from even happening to begin with. When we hear about hostages, we think about criminal gangs and kidnappings. A lot of people don't think about the fact nation states and their proxies are doing this. And when they're doing this, it's for a reason. It's for hostage diplomacy. Over 80% of Americans held abroad by the states in this case aren't charged with any legitimate crimes. They are being used as leverage against our government and to pull our government into different type of agreements and negotiations. And it really puts our government at a weak starting point and there needs to be more done. So countries don't think they can just take advantage of us in this situation. You know, we need to have a harder line when it comes to the wrongful detainment of Americans. It's really interesting. Our government isn't very forthcoming with the American public as to just how many Americans are wrongfully or unjustly detained overseas. So we actually have to go to other organizations who track this and they track through relationships with the families of those detained. So it's a very, very frustrating thing. It's not a lot of like, clear, transparent negotiations going on. There are times we won't even hear an Americans held hostage for years because officials within the State Department will tell those families, hey, it's not going to help in our negotiations if you put up host publicly that your loved one is detained. Right. We had Kyla Mueller's family bring this up. A lot of families have complained about this. So when we talk about tracking, a really great organization is the James Foley Foundation. You know, James was a reporter. He actually came to Benghazi after attacks and he did an interview on the ground with Ahmed Abu Khattala that ended up being the terrorist the US Government framed as a mastermind of our attacks. Unfortunately, he went and did reporting up in the Syria region and then he ended up sadly being beheaded by isis. So his family now put this foundation together to really work through some of these wrongful detainments of Americans and to help other families. So according to them, right now there are at least 41Americans held in these circumstances. And when I say these circumstances, I'M saying, basically by foreign governments abroad. I mean, this is a crazy thing, you know, when we're supposed to be the top of the food chain and all these governments can just switch, swoop in and hold Americans hostage without real criminal prosecutions. Now, historically, you know, there's some states that have been known for doing this. Iran's a really great example, North Korea and then some proxy actors who now, unfortunately have their own states. The Haqqani network being an excellent example of this. And they have used the detention of Americans to extract concessions from our country. Those can be diplomatic, economic, security related. I mean, with the Haqqanis, a lot was to bring in more money and to get tariffs released. And a lot of time the tariffs were released, as you know, from Guantanamo Bay. I mean, a really great example is ahead right now of Taliban's intelligence service, Wasiq. He was in Gitmo. And the insane part is he's also currently involved with the detention of Americans, including he had direct involvement in the detention of Dennis Cole.
- [04:26]
News Reporter
American Dennis Coyle has been taken hostage by the Taliban for almost a year now. His family has been speaking out. Molly Long went on News Nation last week to ask for some more public attention to this case. What is their administration doing to get him home?
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Government Official
Well, if you give me the name Dennis Coyle. Okay, well, you give me some information, I'll take care of that.
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News Reporter
I know that your administration is working.
- [04:50]
Government Official
I know they are. But. But I could do some things on the Internet that are pretty.
- [04:54]
News Reporter
Do you have any response or message to the Taliban for. Who continues to hold him for no crime? For simply.
- [05:01]
Government Official
Well, I'm not happy about them holding anybody. And especially if he's not guilty of anything. And it sounds. I mean, from what I've heard, and again, I'm not that familiar with it like you are, but I will certainly take a very strong position on it.
- [05:16]
Sarah Adams
And the Haqqani family, specifically Surajuddin Haqqani, had direct involvement in the current detention of American Mahmoud Shah Habibi. So when you allow them to do this, year after year after year, they don't stop this practice. They just keep taking advantage of it. And as you know, now the Haqqani network runs a huge part of the Taliban government. They actually run the whole entire ministry of. And so we're going to keep getting into these situations because we are negotiating with them and allowing these to occur. We have not done a red line, and they know they benefit from doing this to Americans. Now, when we talk about the two Americans In Afghanistan, I've long advocated for Mahmoud Shah Habibi. I've worked on his case for the last couple years because it was really interesting. So the Taliban captured Habibi and then they handed him over to Al Qaeda. And what they do is they go tell our government, we don't know what happened with him. He wasn't in our detention. We don't know where he is. We don't even know if he's alive. And then our government parrots that they even compared it to people he was close to.
- [06:29]
News Reporter
We remain deeply concerned about the well being of Mahmoud Habibi and other Americans still detained in Afghanistan. The safety and security of Americans abroad remains a highest priority of this State Department. And we are working tirelessly to bring Americans home. In addition.
- [06:48]
Sarah Adams
And so I found that very frustrating. You know, so we spend a lot of time advocating for Habibi, you know, checking on his status and his welfare because unfortunately he's in a situation where he's not just being held, he's actually being tortured. And then there's a host of other problems that you can imagine when you're in detention for as long as he's been, which has been over a couple years now. You know, you don't get proper nutrition, you know, that affects how your organs operate. Just so many different problems that can occur. So, you know, we're pushing a lot to bring him home because he really is in a situation where his health has deteriorated a lot and a person can only do torture for so long. I know it's not the best way to put it, but, you know, I just want to keep it simple. You know, we don't want to kind of say things that could harm the family or upset the, the family in any way. And then we brought up Dennis Cole. Now, the interesting thing is I knew Dennis Cole was detained in Afghanistan all year, but there really wasn't any kind of outward discussion by our government that he was captured. There weren't really requests until just recently in the last few weeks to release him. So completely ignoring the issue for an entire year there, I believe was again pressure probably on the family to keep it quiet. So it's a frustrating thing when you look at it, because if you notice, this year our government went very strong on hostages in Gaza. Not just Americans, any hostage in Gaza. And then we saw them actually do operations to go free. Americans held in Venezuela. But for some reason, the Americans in Afghanistan are completely ignored. And as we give the Taliban hundreds of millions of dollars a month, so we're paying them, and then they're holding Americans as hostage to continue engagements with us. It's the craziest thing. I mean, this is what terrorist organizations do, unfortunately. Obviously, I spent a lot of time in Afghanistan, but there is a developing story that we have to talk about because it's a very frustrating situation. I don't know if you've seen this. We have these two pilots. They're being held in guinea now. They're not being held by a terrorist organization. They're being held, you know, by the country. The country is a little bit more of like a military controlled institution, but again, they're not in some criminal's hands or they're not in some terrorist hideout. They're being held by the government. I mean, this has been over a month. We're scared.
- [09:27]
CBS News Correspondent
Mr. Trump, can you please come down here and get us out of here? Two pilots, including one from New Jersey, jailed in a West African country for almost six weeks.
- [09:38]
Sarah Adams
And they tell CBS News, New York that it happened when they landed to refuel. Christine Sloan spoke with the two men on the phone.
- [09:47]
Christine Sloan
Ewing resident Fabio Espinal Nunez has years of experience as a pilot, but the 33 year old tells us nothing could prepare him for the terrifying ordeal around six weeks ago when the Republic of Guinea military forces forced its way on the plane. He and co pilot Brad Schlenker had landed in the West African nation in order to refuel.
- [10:09]
CBS News Correspondent
There were around 100 army people and they were pointing AK47s at us and talking in French, which we do not know, more like screaming in French.
- [10:19]
Christine Sloan
Nunez and Schlenk are speaking to us on the phone from the prison. They're being held in Guinea. Describing what sounds like a scene out
- [10:27]
CBS News Correspondent
of a movie, around four to five heavily armored vehicles pointing guns at us and. And saying that we need to go to the ground. We've got the transcripts of the radio transmissions all clearly revealing the fact that we were innocent and ambushed.
- [10:43]
Christine Sloan
Nunez was flying a Brazilian family from Suriname to Dubai on a private plane. The flight log given to us shows they had clearance to land, but the government charging them with violating Ghanaian airspace.
- [10:57]
Sarah Adams
I want to walk through what actually happened here because it's starting to look like hostage diplomacy. So in late December, we had two US Pilots. One is Fabio Nunez and he's from New Jersey, and the other is Brad Schlenker and he's from Illinois. So they were operating a Gulf Stream and they were moving a Brazilian family from Suriname to Dubai, and they were stopping in guinea for just one of your Standard routine visits to get gas, right? You're refueling your jet. Very, very simple. So they put in the flight documentation, they put in the paperwork to obviously have approvals to land. They requested clearances to come into guinea, and they truly believed we have authorization to land, do this refueling trip and be on our way. This is a standard practice as these planes are flying all over the world. This isn't even a situation where I had a friend, he was on a flight, and they actually had to divert the flight. I believe it was a mechanical issue. So he ended up in a not so friendly country. And the authorities did come on the plane and they took him off because he's an American, and he did spend a few days being detained and interrogated. And again, that was a situation where that plane never should have been there. But here, this plane planned to be in this location to refill. So I want you to keep that in mind. They didn't just go into an area they shouldn't have been in. What happened is they touched down to refuel, and instead of a refueling truck come up, they were surrounded by Guinean forces. Right? I mean, they had weapons pointed at them. I mean, this was like a military operation, you know, around their plane. You know, when you talk to people on the ground, you know, they say it was, you know, a very large contingent who met the plane. So this is very concerning. This is something you would do if, like, a terrorist was landing on your soil, right? So obviously what they said to the pilots is you did not have proper authorization to land in guinea again. Now this is a claim that's obviously being disputed. I mean, these pilots do this every single day. There's a lot of different kind of bureaucratic steps you have to go through while you're flying between different airports, stopping for refueling, et cetera. I mean, it's just like. It's just the common thing you do all the time. It's habits like riding a bike. The case could have just been solved quickly. A review of the paperwork, and then figure out what happened. Was it a bureaucratic error, like, what went wrong? But that's not what happened. And then it's now becoming like geopolitical friction because they are still, still wrongfully being held. And now it's February. So this is an insane thing to be held this long for a refueling stock. We have an issue where obviously countries control the airspace above them. That's very simple to understand. And then unauthorized entry, of course, can be criminalized. Now, in the aviation space, there are so many layers of coordination to prevent an issue like this from occurring, you have dispatch filings, regional air traffic control is involved, you have diplomatic overflight permissions. And then of course, there's a ground handler component to this. So when something breaks down in this chain, it's bureaucratic, or you really just had some sort of accidental miscommunication, or there is something politically sensitive going on and you had no idea and you had no shot even if you did everything correctly. And we're all kind of sitting back and being like, well, what is it? Which one is the issue? So the lawyers have a legal team and they've pursued their case through, you know, Guinea's, you know, official legal system because they are detained. You know, first it was approved that they would get bail. Well, that unfortunately didn't materialize. So we have a situation here. It's not like everything's separate. It's not like the judiciary's separate from kind of like this military run government. They get to exert control on it. And that's what appears to be happening in this case. Again, we're not getting a lot of clear answers as to why they couldn't even at least have bail. Another thing is State Department has acknowledged the case and they have said, oh yeah, we have consular visits and we're involved in it from our consular section. As we know, that's not the same as having a high level representative like your Secretary of State involved in this because the consular section doesn't have the type of leverage that a cabinet member has. So a lot of people are like, let's not just rely on the embassy to solve this. Like, why is this not going up the chain of command and somebody getting involved in a more aggressive way. Now here's something that's the truth. Foreign nationals, particularly Americans, have diplomatic street value. I mean, it's insane way to put it, but it's true. That's why we get used as bargaining chips. Even when you hold, hold an American, their case attracts massive media attention, it generates pressure and it creates channels of negotiation that you may never have had as a country. You may never have been able to sit down with our Secretary of State or get on a phone call with our vice President. But in a situation like this, you have some sort of over leverage that, that might put you into those brokering situations. And a lot of time our government wants to wait to see where this is escalating. If we can deal with it just through the legal process, of course we can. But if a country is trying to pull us into this kind of like diplomatic hostage taking. We are going to end up going down that path, even though we didn't want to. So environments where governments face kind of economic strain, political isolation, and their legitimacy kind of on the world stage just isn't there. They think we could use these Americans as a bargaining chip. We could get a benefit from this interaction. So families in this case are really escalating the peel. We're starting to see a little bit of press talk about it, but not as much as you would think for just to innocent Americans being detained. And we do have to get an answer from Washington like this looks like bigger than a consular issue. And is it going to become a diplomatic priority? It should. We do not want this to occur again and again in other countries by ignoring it or being soft on it. We want to say there are repercussions if you wrongly hold Americans hostage before we jump into. Like what, carrots and sticks our government has. One thing I want to bring up that lots of times gets ignored is when you have an American wrongly held, there's a whole other piece everybody forgets about. It's the families. They are so impacted by these detentions. This becomes their entire life to advocate, you know, for their loved one to be released. In some cases, the loved one's even the breadwinner of the family. And then it obviously causes other issues that you can imagine. I mean, think about it. You know, you have fathers and in some cases mothers, you know, they're missing birthdays. Heck, we've had some miss weddings. And sometimes the hostage diplomacy has gone on. So far we've had some of these detainees die in custody. You know, we believe Paul Overby is likely deceased. He had basically gone to Afghanistan and then he traveled over into Waziristan to meet again. Suraj Adin Haqqani. He ties to a lot of these in that area. You know, just to interview him for a book. And then he got captured. You know, we of course have Bob Levinson, you know, Robert Levinson, held in Iran, and it took so long to do the negotiations to free him that he unfortunately died in prison. Well, this is a massive impact on the families. And then these families have almost become a community. They start making friends with the other detained families. And as you can imagine, the impacts are felt by all of them. So I just want to at least bring up, hey, this isn't just about Americans being used as bargaining chips. There's a human cost involved here. And there are nations damaging Americans and then Americans families back home. I talked to the wife of one of our American detainees. And you could hear it. She was frustrated. She wasn't getting answers from our government. She was getting misinformation about even the status of her husband's situation. And I think people are getting really frustrated because, like I said, this is not a clear and transparent process. They don't do it repeatable. Right. I explained to you, in some cases, they lean all in, and that hostage is the most important person in the universe. And other hostages, they don't even say their names publicly, or they don't even announce at all that an American is detained there to begin with. So just understand there is a piece of it where families are feeling like what would be a moral injury from the government in the way they're handling these cases. Now, if we just look back at some numbers from 2024, at that time, we had 54Americans held in this custody or this state of hostage, at least that their families wanted to publicly come out and say, remember, there are families pressured not to say anything. So the numbers aren't always exactly accurate. But in that case, of the 54, they were in 17 different countries. So it's not like two or three countries use Americans for hostage diplomacy. We're talking about over a dozen. So this is our problem. That's happened again and again and again, and we keep allowing it to occur. You know, another stark fact from this is when an American gets held in one of these situations by a nation state, there's not really a criminal prosecution or a legitimate means to hold them. On average, their state spending six years in detention. Six years. Now, think about it. When you're kind of older and elderly, you know, one of these hostages that are in their 60s and 70s, and then you're going into these detentions in third world countries, you know, without proper food, medical care, and really limited access to consular services. I mean, I can tell you, habibi has not had any consular visits from the US Government. That's a long time to sustain yourself and to be in the situation where you don't know if people on the outside are advocating for you, you don't have access to the press, you're staying strong, but there are times where you're losing hope. It's a very frustrating situation to be in. So what does the US Government actually do when we have Americans held abroad? I want to talk a little bit about it as this carrot instead stick phenomenon. But first I want to talk about this legal framework that has been put in place to help, and then a follow on executive order so we have the Robert Levinson. I told you, he goes by Bob. You know, he was held in Iranian custody. The Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery and Hostage Taking Accountability Act. So in this case, it allows the Secretary of State, so Marco Rubio, to officially designate a detective detained American as wrongfully detained. You know, that is a critical mandate that triggers then high level US Engagement. So once you say, yep, they're officially wrongfully detained, you can get cabinet level individuals involved in negotiating their release. So when you're a family, that's the designation you want, right? Because you want your case at the highest and top levels of the US Government. You want their eyes and their effort on it. They need to be invested, of course, in getting your loved one released. Now, the other legal framework put into place is really interesting. So it was September 5, 2025, and now President Donald Trump signed an executive order and it elevated it up a step. So we said, how you get labeled a wrongful detainee? Well, he took it to another level and he said, hey, how about we just designate people, state sponsors of wrongful detention so a country can be holding an American and get this designation? So I'm gonna walk through a little bit of how these work. So when we talk carrots, that's more US Policy. So there's like quiet diplomacy, third party negotiations, obviously, like a cutter and stuff. Saudi sometimes takes the lead in some of these cases to do the negotiations to get Americans released. We have humanitarian engagement, even offers of aid. Sometimes it looks like an American was freed and no money passed hands. But in a large number of cases, a big chunk of money will be handed to an NGO or those type of things. So there are things that happen behind the scenes that really the public was never made aware of. But a lot of money happens to move in these cases. And then the last one is obviously, again, that consular access. Right. Obviously, our embassies abroad will say, we want access to the detainee. We want to bring in lawyers for the detainee. We want to be part of the legal process to support this detainee. And in a lot of cases, like I said, they're being held hostage, and they really do need that extra legal support. So when we talk about kind of those carrots, all that is to really incentivize a country, you know, to release the American who's held without any sort of conflict. It's really almost all quiet behind the scenes. You know, this isn't on the CNN ticker. It's like, let's see what we can do. Quietly to resolve this issue, you know, free the American and move on from it. Of course, not everything stays at that level. And you have to use sticks. So of course this new executive order is a stick. Now, when you have sticks and under this executive order, you can do these things, that means you can sanction a country, individuals, organizations in the country for wrongfully holding Americans. You can restrict visas for them, right? So you can say, none of your elites get visas. You can say, oh, none of your children can have visas to US Universities. That is an option. They don't ever employ it, but it's an option. You can do export controls, you can affect the economies of these locations. And then diplomatic pressure increases dramatically. Now when this occurs, and once we get into this phase, if you do release the American, you can then roll back and not be the state designated issue. So it's not like you get a designation that lasts forever. Like a tear scoop could be designated designated, and then it could take a really long time. So you roll that back. If ever, in this case, if you release the American and you do the negotiations, you can roll it back. But you know, one thing we find frustrating is, okay, you have these sticks, especially under this executive order, why aren't you using them against the Taliban? You can cut US Funding to the Taliban, right? We fund them humanitarian dollars and we fund them counterterrorism dollars, right? You can end both buckets. You have the ability to affect the travel of senior Taliban leaders, right? You can go to the un you can go to the Security Council and say, hey, I know we gave approvals for these few members of the Taliban to travel, but let's not restrict that because they're holding Americans hostage. That is an opportunity we have. You can put sanctions against them. The crazy part is a lot of senior Taliban leaders have sanctions and even the US Government have seen circumvented those sanctions to get them funds. While we have this act and then this executive order in place that really could be affecting these issues and this hostage diplomacy, we're not using them in every case. And it's really interesting and it's leading to a lot of people to say, what is different about the Taliban? Who in the White House is saying, no, no, no, don't use this executive order against the Taliban because something like that is happening and a lot of people are asking a lot of questions about it and they're actually very concerned that there's different rules in place and for some reason the Taliban's getting a pass at harming Americans. And remember, in this case, the Taliban even handed an American over to Al Qaeda to torture. Like, that is a level that should be a red line for all of us. And there's such little advocacy to do anything about this. I want to just quickly go through a few more of the Americans held overseas and just give their location. So we have Alina Lopez. She was detained since 2017 in Cuba. We have Chuck Zimmerman. He's been detained since June 2025 in Russia. We have Reza Velesday, been detained since 2024 in Iran. We have Thari Singh, detained since 2022 in Cambodia. And we have Olga Gessler, detained since 2022 in Russia. So this isn't just Guinea. It's not just Afghanistan. We have Cuba, Iran, Russia, Cambodia. And each of those names doesn't just represent this person stuck in this insane world of hostage diplomacy, but there's families who are impacted. Their sitting there by their phones awaiting answers. They do not know how their loved one is doing. It's a very frustrating thing. So hostage diplomacy rarely gets any sort of headlines, but these are real humans, real Americans caught in the crossfire. And today we walk through some of the personal stories, but as I told you, there's over 40Americans held by nation state. You know, there's a lot of people needing help and a lot of families out there just advocating for a voice and saying, hey, my loved one's detained too. You know, like, bring them home. And that's where we need to be. No American should be used in this ridiculous chessboard, you know, of world diplomacy. And it's time to bring them all home. Thanks for tuning in.