00:00My question is Russia-adjacent about detainees last week, so if you want to – okay.
00:04Sure.
00:05Sure.
00:06One is there were conflicting characterizations of whether Asukur-Masheva was, in fact, officially
00:09designated as wrongfully detained.
00:11Can you clarify whether she was or not before the release?
00:13She was.
00:14She was designated as wrongfully detained.
00:16When did that happen?
00:17It happened last week, shortly in the days before she was returned home.
00:21Okay.
00:22And the family of Mark Fogle in legal proceedings against this department has argued that had
00:26he been designated as wrongfully detained, it would have also led to his release.
00:30Do you have any comment on that?
00:32So I'm not going to speak to questions that involve ongoing litigation for reasons I think
00:38you can understand, but I will speak to this issue in general.
00:42First of all, with respect to Mark Fogle, we are working to try to secure his release.
00:46We work to try to secure his release as part of this deal, and we're unable to.
00:50But we continue to call for his release and we continue to work to secure his release.
00:55And I think – let me just point to the events of last week to talk about our record,
01:01because I have a number of times stood up here and been pressed why we haven't designated
01:07certain individuals as wrongfully detained.
01:09I think Alex asked me two weeks ago about the wrongful designation of Alsu Kermesheva,
01:13and I think asked me, you know, are we not designating her as wrongfully detained because
01:17she's a woman or because she's a Muslim.
01:18It's obviously not true, as I said at the time.
01:21And the point I made is when we say that we are working to get someone's release,
01:27we mean it.
01:28And our record backs it up.
01:30And sometimes we are working to obtain their release when they have officially received
01:35a wrongful detention determination.
01:39Sometimes there are other individuals who we say we're working to secure their release,
01:43and they never receive that determination.
01:45A great example is Vladimir Karamurza, who was not determined by this department to be
01:48wrongfully detained, but yet we were still able to secure his release last week.
01:53So let me just point to something the Secretary said in the statement he released on Thursday
01:58when this news became public, and that's that he knows – he had a lot of difficult conversations,
02:04as you would imagine, right, with the families of those who have been wrongfully detained
02:07and others who have been detained overseas over the past couple years.
02:11And he can certainly understand that there were times that they worried that our efforts
02:15would not bear fruit.
02:17But we know they never gave up hope, and we didn't give up hope, and we continued to
02:21work to secure all of their release, and that is true with Mark Fogle and that is true for
02:25every American who is wrongfully detained overseas.
02:28I certainly understand, and I'm not a lawyer for the family, that it's not maybe a prerequisite
02:33or a requirement for an American to be released, but it is a fact that three out of the four
02:38Americans in this case were designated as wrongfully detained, and that led to their
02:43release, as was Brittany Greiner.
02:44So just if there's anything else you want to say to the Fogle family at this particular
02:48–
02:49So I would say to the family, as you've heard from others in the Administration, that
02:53we continue to be committed to securing his release, and we continue to work on it.
02:56It's something that we think about every day.
02:58And the same thing that we said to the family of Paul Whelan when Brittany Greiner was returned,
03:03and we had tried to get Paul Whelan out as part of that deal, and it just simply wasn't
03:07– it wasn't on the table.
03:08It wasn't on the table as part of that deal.
03:10And we made clear to Paul, and we made clear to his family that we had not forgotten him
03:15and that we would continue to work on his release, and that was true, and ultimately
03:18we were able to get him home.
03:19The same thing is true with Mark Fogle.
03:21We continue to work on his release.
03:22We really wanted to get him out as part of this deal.
03:24We're not the only party to the deal, right, and we weren't able to do it, but we continue
03:30to work on it.
03:31And just with this question of wrongfully detained, not wrongfully detained, which we
03:36get asked about a lot for very understandable reasons, I would just note that there is a
03:40statutory review that we have to go through that lists certain factors that we have to
03:45apply when making the determination about whether someone is wrongfully detained or
03:50not.
03:51And we go through that, and we have to apply the law rigorously, and that's what we do.
03:54But there are others who, for whatever reason, we have not made the determination at any
03:59one time.
04:00They have not met the statutory criteria.
04:02But if there's someone that we say that we are working to bring home, like Vladimir
04:05Karamazov, we're working to bring him home, and hopefully someday we will.
04:09Why was Karamazov not wrongfully detained?
04:12So as always, I'm not going to speak to the determination with any one individual,
04:17but it's – we have to go – we go through the statutory criteria with all of them and
04:22add all that up and make a determination based on the facts of their case, based on the law
04:26that applies to their case, and based on the requirements of the Levinson Act, does that
04:30all add up to a wrongful determination.
04:32And in the case of Alsu Karmasheva, the statutory review led us to conclude it did.
04:37In the case of Vladimir Karamazov, it led us to conclude that it did not.
04:41That said, we still thought he ought to be released.
04:45We still pressed for his release.
04:46We were still able to get his release.
04:48The question was whether she was designated the day before or the day after, because I
04:53also –
04:54It was sometime last week.
04:55I don't remember.
04:56I don't remember the exact day.
04:57It was sometime last week.
04:58But it did not happen before the decision was announced, right?
04:59I mean, she was released.
05:00But I asked this question last week, and Medant did not have the answer that she was designated.
05:07It happened last week, shortly before her release.
05:09I'm not going to get into any further detail.
