The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
U.S.: Militants killed woman
Pentagon places blame for hostage death; Obama pledges justice.
TUCSON, ARIZ. — The family of an American woman abducted while volunteering in Syria said Tuesday that they have received confirmation she is dead.
Islamic State militants released a video last week claiming that Kayla Mueller, 26, was killed in an air attack by coalition forces against the militants in Syria.
But a Pentagon spokesman, Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby, said there was “no doubt” that the militants killed Mueller. He said officials have not learned yet how she died.
President Barack Obama pledged to bring Mueller’s captors to justice “no matter how long it takes.”
The White House said Obama had spoken with Muel-
ler’s parents and offered his prayers. The president said Mueller “epitomized all that is good in our world.”
Later, in an interview with BuzzFeed News, Obama said a rescue mission to recover Mueller and other hostages last summer probably missed them by “a day or two.”
Mueller’s family released a statement saying that it had received confirmation of her death. A source close to the family who requested anonymity said a private message containing additional information from the captors was sent to Mueller’s parents over the weekend. Once the statement was authenticated by the intelligence community, the family concluded that she was dead, the source said.
“We are heartbroken to share that we’ve received confirmation that Kayla Jean Mueller has lost her life,” her parents, Carl and Marsha Mueller, and her brother, Eric, said in the statement.
U.S. officials are aware of at least one other American being held in the region, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said. He did not identify the individual. But he may have been referring to Austin Tice, an American journalist and former Marine who disappeared in Syria in August 2012.
It is not clear who is holding Tice, but his parents, Debra and Marc Tice, have said that they don’t believe he is in the hands of Islamic State militants.
“Our hearts go out to the Mueller family and everyone who loves Kayla,” the family said in a statement posted on a website that aims to raise awareness about Austin Tice’s captivity. “We have no way of understanding what they are going through, and we wish them all possible comfort.”
Mueller had a long history of volunteering to help women and chil- dren, having worked for aid groups in Arizona before setting out for other countries, including India and Turkey.
In August 2013, she was abducted in the Syrian city of Aleppo as she left a hospital operated by Doctors Without Borders and was being held in Raqqa, a militant stronghold in northeastern Syria.
The family statement also included letters Mueller wrote to her family, including one on her father’s birthday in 2011.
“Some people find God in church. Some people find God in nature. Some people find God in love,” she wrote. “I find God in suffering. I’ve known for some time what my life’s work is, using my hands as tools to relieve suffering.”
After attending Northern Arizona University, she lived and worked with aid groups in northern India, Israel and the Palestinian territories. She returned to Arizona in 2011, where she worked at an HIV/AIDS clinic and volunteered at a women’s shelter. Late that year, she moved to southeastern France and worked as an au pair while learning French in preparation for a planned move to Africa.
But the plight of families fleeing the violence in war-torn Syria drew her to Turkey in December 2012. She worked with the aid groups Support to Life and the Danish Refugee Council, assisting women and children who crossed into Turkey as refugees.
She also made some trips into Syria to help reconnect family members separated by the fighting. Her trips into the country took her to Aleppo, where she was eventually kidnapped.
In correspondence to her family, which she slipped to other detainees who were being freed, Mueller was contrite and seemed to try to assuage her family’s worry. She told them she was being treated well and was not in harm’s way.
“If you could say I have ‘suffered’ at all throughout this whole experience it is only in knowing how much suffering I have put you all through; I will never ask you to forgive me as I do not deserve forgiveness,” Mueller wrote in a letter the family said they received in the spring of last year.
She said in the letter that she was willing to wait for her release if it meant that her family would be absolved of the burden of negotiating her freedom.
“I DO NOT want the negotiations for my release to be your duty, if there is any other option take it, even if it takes more time,” she wrote. “This should never have become your burden.”