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 The family passed the message on to the U.S. government. The FBI,
which handles cases involving kidnapped American citizens, helped
craft a response, pleading for mercy, said Phil Balboni, chief
executive of GlobalPost, the Boston-based online news publication
that employed Foley.
"It was an appeal for mercy. It was a statement that Jim was an
innocent journalist" who respected the people of Syria, where he was
held, Balboni said in a telephone interview.
Foley's family and friends hoped the militants were bluffing and
wanted a ransom, he said.
On Tuesday, Islamic State militants stunned America with a gruesome
video posted on YouTube showing the beheading of Foley, 40, by a
masked, black-clad man who also threatened to kill a second American
journalist, Steven Sotloff.
Foley's death, highlighting how Syria has become perhaps the most
dangerous country in the world for journalists, followed intense
efforts by GlobalPost and others to identify his captors, and
despite brief email exchanges between the militants and his family
in late 2013 about a possible ransom.
The captors demanded a ransom of 100 million euros, or about $135
million, for his release, according to a GlobalPost spokesman.
The Foleys did not hear back from the militants until this month's
threatening email, which GlobalPost published in full on Thursday
after it said the Foleys agreed to its release.
Addressed as "a message to the American government and their sheep
like citizens," the email said: "You were given many chances to
negotiate the release of your people via cash transactions as other
governments have accepted."
The group added it had also offered prisoner exchanges for "Muslims
currently in your detention."
Saying that the United States responded with airstrikes, the email
ended with a declaration that Foley "will be executed as a DIRECT
result of your transgressions towards us!"
The White House declined to comment on the warning about Foley but
it said special operations troops were sent to Syria earlier this
summer on a secret mission to rescue American hostages, including
Foley, but did not find them.
"Since his capture, we have been using every tool at our disposal to
try to bring him home to his family and to gather any and all
information we could get about his whereabouts, his condition and
the threats he faced," White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said.
Obama vowed on Wednesday the United States would keep supporting
Iraqis in the fight against Islamic State.
"AN EXTRAORDINARY PERSON"
Foley, who had previously been detained in Libya, was abducted on
Nov. 22, 2012 - on the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday - near the city of
Binnish in Syria's Idlib province, as he and his colleagues made
their way toward the Turkish border.
Who initially seized Foley has been a subject of dispute. Some signs
pointed to the Shabiha, militias loyal to the government of Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad.
Balboni said there had been strong indications that Foley had been
transferred to the Syrian capital Damascus. That information later
proved incorrect.
The first solid information about Foley's condition, he said, came
nearly a year after his abduction, from a returning European
jihadist, or Islamic fighter, who had been with the American
journalist in the city of Aleppo. This person provided confirmation
that Foley was alive, as well as first-hand details of his captivity
and his captors.
Foley was moved a number of times, and passed through the hands of
various captors, Balboni said.
Didier Francois, a veteran French war correspondent who was held
with Foley and released with three other French hostages in April,
said he had little doubt Foley was under the control of Islamic
State or its affiliates the entire time.
"The guy who killed him is the guy who took him from the start,"
Francois told Reuters.
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Francois said he had been held with Foley from last August until
April and that he was also held almost nine months with Sotloff.
"He was an extraordinary person with a strong character. He was a
pleasant companion in detention because he was solid and collective.
He never gave in to the pressure and violence of the kidnappers,"
Francois said of Foley. Francois, who said he shared a cell with
Foley beginning in October, said he had not spoken about Sotloff or
Foley until now because the kidnappers had threatened to kill the
remaining hostages if they did.
Another released Frenchmen, Nicolas Henin, told France's Express
magazine that Foley had been treated worse than the other captives,
after militants searched his computer and discovered his brother was
in the U.S. Air Force.
"Because of that and as he was American he got extra bad treatment.
He became the whipping boy of the jailers, but he remained
implacable," Henin told the magazine.
RANSOM TALKS
In November 2013, Foley's family received its first e-mail message
from the journalist's captors, demanding a ransom and offering proof
he was alive, Balboni said.
That exchange did not last long. "Very few" messages were passed, he
said. "They were not loquacious," Balboni said of the captors. "They
made their demands."
The communications channel soon went silent, and until last
Wednesday, there were no further messages to the family.
The U.S. government says it has a firm policy of not paying ransom
in kidnapping cases, or encouraging third parties to do so, a policy
that differs from many European governments. The British government
has a similar approach to that of the United States.
At the time, Islamic State was "busy, busy releasing and ransoming
other hostages," Balboni said. "We believed that the American and
British captives were always going to be held for last."
KIDNAPPING SPREE
Foley was one of dozens of journalists abducted in Syria during its
3-1/2-year civil war.
Not all of their names have been made public at the request of their
families or news organizations that employ them. They include
Sotloff and Austin Tice, who disappeared near Damascus in August
2012. Nothing has been heard of Tice since a brief video uploaded to
the Internet in September 2012.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said it has
documented 80 journalists who have been abducted in Syria since
2011, including 65 in the last year alone. Many of them are native
Syrians, said CPJ's deputy director Robert Mahoney.
"We have never documented so many kidnappings in a single conflict
as we have in Syria," Mahoney said.
About two dozen journalists are still believed held captive in
Syria, with several others missing.
Until Foley's killing, militants had kept most foreign hostages
alive in hopes of securing a ransom or political gain, Mahoney said.
(Additional reporting by Steve Holland and Peter Cooney; Editing by
Jason Szep and Ken Wills)
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