News / Foreign Policy

Biden to use sanctions as leverage to free US prisoners

Tuesday, 19 July 2022 4:40 PM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 19 July 2022 4:40 PM ]

US WNBA basketball star Brittney Griner inside a Russian jail at the Khimki Court in the town of Khimki outside Moscow on July 15, 2022. (Photo by AFP)

US President Joe Biden has decided to use sanctions to ramp-up efforts to free American detainees held in jails outside the country.

Biden signed an executive order on Tuesday opening the way for sanctions against governments that imprisoned Americans and ordered more detailed travel warnings after a series of high-profile detentions.

The executive order authorizes US government agencies to impose financial sanctions or travel bans on foreign officials or non-state actors involved in the detentions of American citizens.

The move comes after US media reported Biden was not doing enough to free US basketball star Brittney Griner. Griner, who has pleaded guilty in a Russian court to drug charges, has denied deliberately breaking the law.

Iran says not concerned about US statesmen’s ‘meddlesome’ remarks

Tehran says Washington will not be able to create a rift in the Iranian nation through “meddlesome” statements.

In this regard, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed a "relentless" effort was underway to free citizens overseas. "When Americans are taken captive abroad, we must do everything in our power to secure their release," Blinken said in a statement.

The State Department, in its travel advisories for Americans, will also begin to highlight in which countries there is an elevated risk of likely detentions.

In the meantime, the US government itself is notorious for the unlawful imprisonment of foreign nationals in the Guantanamo Bay prison.

Guantanamo: Extraordinary rendition, torture, eternal detention

Guantanamo, which at its peak held over 700 inmates, has been synonymous with human rights abuses perpetrated by the US government in the name of the war on terrorism.

Guantanamo detainees were subjected to widespread abuse, humiliation, and torture during their interrogations, the accounts of which were gradually exposed to the outside world by the few inspectors who visited the prison and some of the inmates who were released years later. Human rights advocates have repeatedly called on successive US governments to end the practice of indefinitely holding detainees at Guantanamo without charge, something Democrats had vowed, yet failed, to do.

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