LEFT FOR DEAD
Kayla kin: Doc group nixed help for ISIS hostage
DOCTORS Without Borders refused to help negotiate for the release of ISIS hostage Kayla Mueller, the parents of the slain woman told a TV station.
Marsha and Carl Mueller told ABC, in an interview airing Friday, that the international aid organization was involved in the release of other prisoners — but it would not involve itself with their daughter.
The group didn’t dispute that claim, and even went a step further, telling the station it had no “moral responsibility” to help Mueller.
The 26-year-old woman died in a 2015 air strike, but not before she was raped, tortured and forced to serve as a sex slave to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, according to a fellow captive.
Mueller was working for another humanitarian organization in Turkey starting in 2012 and traveled into Syria with her boyfriend, Omar Alkhani, a Doctors Without Borders contractor, in August 2013 to help install hospital equipment.
Mueller, Alkhani and a second Doctors Without Borders worker were captured by Islamic State fighters while returning home, and she was shuttled between houses as the other hostages were set free. American officials confirmed her death in February 2015 from what ISIS said was a Jordanian air strike.
The terrorist group had previously said it would kill Mueller in August 2014 unless a Pakistani woman in an American prison was released or it received $5.63 million. Mueller’s parents pleaded for her life, for months, with no information about what happened to her.
U.S. policy then didn’t allow ransom payments to terrorist groups, and officials said families who tried to raise money to free loved ones could be prosecuted.Doctors Without Borders does not have a policy against negotiating for hostages, and ABC reported seven of its staff members have been released by ISIS.
Mueller’s father said the group is a “fabulous organization,” but “somewhere in a boardroom, they decided to leave our daughter there to be tortured and raped and ultimately murdered.”
The aid group’s U.S. executive director, Jason Cone, told ABC that Mueller did not work for the organization, it doesn’t negotiate for people it doesn’t employ and it has no “moral responsibility” to do so. In a statement released later Wednesday, the agency praised Mueller but said it would have prevented her from going to its hospital in Syria if it knew of her plans because of the risk to Americans.
It added that arranging for the release of nonstaff would limit the group’s “ability to provide lifesaving care to people caught in dangerous conflicts.”