In August 2021, with summer coming to a close, then–60-year-old Marc Fogel left his family home in Pennsylvania and flew to Russia. The husband and father of two had worked abroad as a high school history teacher for 35 years, and he was looking forward to his final year at the Anglo-American School in Moscow before retirement. But he never arrived.
For the last 30 years, Fogel has suffered from chronic back pain. He’s had three back surgeries, knee surgeries, a rotator cuff surgery, and a hip replacement, none of which have provided relief. In July 2020, Elizabeth Spaar, Fogel’s family doctor in Pennsylvania, prescribed him marijuana as an alternative to opioids. Fogel took the medication with him to Russia. He planned to declare it along with the proper documentation, but didn’t get the chance.
After landing at Sheremetyevo International Airport, Russian authorities were waiting for him. His lawyers believe they had been tipped off by a former employee at the now-defunct school.
Fogel was charged with possessing and smuggling 17 grams (less than an ounce) of marijuana, a misdemeanor in most parts of the U.S. where cannabis isn’t yet legal. At the advice of his Russian counsel, he pleaded guilty, hoping the judge would show him leniency. Instead, in June 2022 a Moscow court sentenced him to 14 years in a maximum security penal colony—IK-2, in the Yaroslavl region, where he’s been ever since.
It’s “a death sentence,” Sasha Phillips, his family’s lawyer, told me. “There is no doubt in our minds that the Russian government was preparing him as a hostage pawn, in the hopes of getting somebody back that they had wanted,” Phillips said.
Fogel’s health has deteriorated and Dr. Daniel Steiner, another one of his physicians in Pennsylvania, warned that “his current circumstances,” incarcerated and lacking specialized medical care, “will lead to permanent dysfunction, disability, and/or death.”
Unfortunately, Fogel has stepped into a nightmare that dozens of other Americans are living across the world: Detained abroad for years, not because of what they’ve done, but because of where they’re from. And many are left wondering how to get more help from their own government.
Just this past Thanksgiving, that nightmare came to an end for three Americans who had been detained by China. Released in a prisoner swap were John Leung, an FBI informant detained in 2021; Kai Li, a New Yorker detained since 2016; and Mark Swidan, a businessman held on false charges since 2012.
But Fogel, along with many others, is facing another Christmas in the gulag. And there’s no saying how many more holidays they’ll spend there.
It’s surprisingly difficult to pin down an exact number of Americans in this situation. The U.S. government doesn’t publish a list, and not every family seeks publicity. (The Free Press has compiled a list of publicly identified detained Americans below.)
Even the terms used can be squishy. “Detention” can cover a variety of circumstances, including exit bans in which people are prevented from leaving a country but free to move within it. And “wrongful detention” doesn’t always mean the person is innocent. It could mean they’ve received a disproportionate sentence or are being held primarily for political leverage.
China and Russia account for just over half of the current wrongful-detention cases of U.S. nationals, according to the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation. The organization, named after an American freelance journalist abducted by ISIS in 2012 and executed two years later, estimates that 34 Americans are being held hostage or wrongfully detained across 16 countries by either non-state or governmental actors, although some of them are not publicly identified.
The Dui Hua Foundation, a U.S.-based human-rights group, estimates that in China alone there are at least 200 Americans held under coercive measures, a catchall term that includes arrests, residential surveillance, exit bans, and both pre- and post-trial detention.
Fogel’s case is about as clear-cut as it gets. And because of that, his family has managed to capture some public sympathy. In December 2023, both of Pennsylvania’s senators, John Fetterman and Bob Casey, as well as 13 House members, wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, asking that Fogel “be included in any discussion involving other Americans wrongfully detained in Russia.” On August 1, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan described Fogel as “wrongfully detained” at a press conference.
Yet despite his friends in high places, Fogel remains in limbo, as do dozens of others who have no one but family to advocate for them.
Some are caught between two versions of their story. Take 67-year-old American David Barnes, who in 2021 followed his Russian ex-wife, Svetlana Koptyaeva, to her home country after she took their two children there in breach of their custody agreement.
Koptyaeva had accused Barnes of sexually abusing their children in the U.S., an allegation American authorities had investigated and concluded was unfounded. But after Barnes went to Russia to consult with lawyers about how to enforce his custody rights, Koptyaeva repeated the allegations to Russian authorities, who detained her ex-husband. In February 2024, Barnes was convicted of sexual abuse and sentenced to 21 years in a penal colony.
In other cases, there is very little public information about what a person has done to be targeted. For instance, American Jimmy Wilgus was working in Russia as a musician when his family say he was arrested, beaten by police, tried behind closed doors, and convicted on what they called false charges of indecent exposure. Russian authorities sentenced Wilgus to 12.5 years in IK-17, a penal colony in Mordovia, Russia.
“I’m doing all I can to keep him motivated to not give up,” Jim Wilgus, Jimmy’s 87-year-old father told me. He said that Roger Carstens, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, has written to their family a few times to express sympathy. “But, of course, they tell us there’s nothing they can do. It’s up to the president or the secretary of state.”
“We just wait,” said Wilgus. “We wait for something to happen.”
Wilgus’s jailmate, Thomas Stwalley, is another American who protests his innocence. Stwalley’s family said he was grabbed and beaten by police, and falsely convicted of intent to distribute marijuana in 2017. Russell Stwalley, one of Thomas’s brothers, believes his sibling deserves official recognition from the U.S. government as wrongfully detained, and that such a designation would “make the Russians realize that he is a valued citizen.”
He and his father have written to the White House multiple times. It hasn’t helped.
There are thousands of Americans imprisoned across the world for legitimate reasons. But wrongful detention essentially means “another country taking somebody’s citizen for political leverage,” said Beth Cooper, a former senior adviser to the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs.
The hostage affairs office, a specialized division within the State Department, was given new powers under the 2020 Levinson Act. Named after Robert Levinson, a retired FBI agent who disappeared in Iran in 2007, the act was intended to bring more clarity to how the government decided who had been improperly imprisoned, a process that was opaque beforehand.
It lays out 11 criteria, including: if the detention is “solely or substantially” because of American citizenship; if there are credible reports of innocence; if there’s evidence of inhumane conditions; and if the detaining country is known to disregard due-process rights.
It doesn’t specify how many criteria a person must meet to receive the designation, and the State Department says the label is discretionary and depends on “the totality of the circumstances.” But without it, the government typically won’t pursue a detainee’s rescue.
And that’s where things can get contentious. Take Fogel’s case. Despite his high-profile advocates, the State Department hasn’t officially designated him as wrongfully detained.
“The problem is not with the law. The problem is with its application,” said the family’s lawyer, Phillips. “Marc actually fits six, arguably seven, out of the 11 of the Levinson Act criteria for being designated as wrongfully detained.”
Families feel there is unequal treatment. For instance, in February 2022, American basketball star Brittney Griner was detained in Russia for nearly 10 months for possessing 0.7 grams of cannabis oil.
Phillips notes that Griner and Fogel were charged “under the same exact articles,” both pleaded guilty, and both got harsh sentences—9 and 14 years, respectively.
Yet Griner got wrongful detention status in a matter of months, while Fogel still hasn’t.
Even if they get the designation, securing the freedom of a detained American depends in large part on the willingness of their captors to engage. Success often turns on whether the U.S. has a prisoner the other country is willing to trade for.
The Russians set the price of Brittney Griner’s release as the return of Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer, who has since resumed making dirty deals and selling weapons to the Houthis.
Marc “thought when Brittney Griner was released that he would be on the plane with her, because they had identical cases,” said Malphine Fogel, Marc’s 95-year-old mother. “Well, that’s been a long time ago, and you know, still there.”
The Fogels felt left out again in April 2022 after the U.S. swapped Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot, convicted of conspiracy to smuggle cocaine in the U.S., for Trevor Reed, a former Marine, convicted of endangering the lives of two police officers while visiting Moscow.
Then came the big prisoner exchange with Russia this summer that secured the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, radio journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, and Marine veteran Paul Whelan.
In late July, the Fogel family heard rumors from Russian sources that a prisoner exchange might be happening and hoped he would be on a plane out. But when the family received a call from him, still in Russia, their hearts sank.
“He was just totally crushed,” said Malphine Fogel. “He couldn’t understand why he wasn’t included, but I think it’s because he didn’t have that designation of being wrongfully detained.”
When an American is detained abroad, the arresting country is obliged to inform U.S. consular officials, who check to ensure that Americans’ basic needs and human rights are being met. If they suspect wrongful detention, consular officers make a recommendation to the secretary of state.
But obtaining an official designation can take weeks, months. . . or years. It is only when the secretary of state signs off on the case that the “advocacy begins. . . to get the people out and home,” said Cooper, the former hostage affairs employee.
The hostage affairs office was established in 2015 after the U.S. government’s failures to recover several citizens taken and killed by ISIS in Syria and Pakistan, including James Foley, son of the Foley Foundation’s president and founder, Diane Foley. The office’s initial focus was on hostages, but under the Levinson Act, it has begun to pursue the cases of wrongful detainees as well.
In terms of U.S. government support, hostage cases are more clear-cut. Six days after the October 7 massacre in Israel, the families of Americans taken hostage by Hamas had a video call with President Joe Biden.
“Biden made it clear to us that as far as the United States is concerned, this was going to be a top-down operation,” said Yehuda Beinin, whose daughter Liat was released in the brief November 2023 ceasefire.
Iris Weinstein Haggai says “the American administration has been amazing.” Her parents, Judith and Gad, were murdered by Hamas militants, who still hold their bodies in Gaza along with that of fellow U.S. citizen Itay Chen. “I can’t even count how many times we have had meetings with [Antony] Blinken and [Jake] Sullivan, and these people who have a lot of impact,” she said of the U.S. secretary of state and national security adviser.
But VIP access and high praise are unusual. “The cases of those being held in Gaza have drawn, rightly so, a lot of attention, and the response from the administration and Congress has been extraordinary,” said Benjamin Gray, executive director of the Foley Foundation. “We’ve never seen anything like it, in terms of a level of support across the board, and we wish that for everyone.”
Some families worry that without intervention by the U.S. government, time will run out. Fogel has missed the college graduations of his sons, Ethan and Sam, as well as countless family occasions. Malphine Fogel prays the rosary for her son every night. She’s desperate to see her child again before it’s too late.
“His health is deteriorated, his psychological outlook is impaired. It’s just been a very, very tough time for everybody, and I just feel like there’s been irreparable damage done to him and to his family, but we have to hope for the best,” she said.
“I don’t want them to forget about him,” Malphine said. “He should be the next person who is swapped, and I hope and pray that that’s the case.”
Some of the publicly identified U.S. citizens who have been kidnapped or imprisoned abroad under questionable circumstances. This list does not include U.S. permanent residents, i.e., people who are not citizens, or people subject to exit bans.
Name: Jeffrey Ake
Age: 66 (47 when abducted)
Country: Taken in Iraq
Year Kidnapped: 2005
Jeffrey Ake, a businessman from LaPorte, Indiana, traveled to Iraq nearly 20 years ago. The CEO of Equipment Express was abducted by masked gunmen on April 11, 2005, while working at a water bottling plant near Baghdad.
Two days later, his captors, whose identities remain unknown, released a video of Ake pleading for his life. They called his wife, Liliana, and made demands but afterward broke off communication.
In 2014, Ake’s family held a private funeral for him. But in 2015, the State Department said his case was still open. A spokesman for the FBI in October declined to comment on the current status of the case.
Name: Edan Alexander
Age: 20
Country: Held in Gaza
Year Kidnapped: 2023
Edan Alexander, a dual Israeli-American citizen, was born in Tel Aviv and grew up in Tenafly, New Jersey. After graduating from high school, he joined the Israeli infantry.
On October 7, 2023, Edan was stationed near the Gaza Strip when Hamas launched its assault on Israel. His mother, Yael, phoned him around 6:30 a.m. as rockets began falling. Edan assured her he was safe but lost contact afterward. A week later, Israeli authorities informed Edan’s family that he had been taken as a hostage by Hamas. On November 30, 2024, Hamas released a propaganda video showing Alexander alive.
Name: Ciham Ali
Age: 27
Country: Detained in Sudan
Year Detained: 2012
Ciham Ali, a dual Eritrean-American citizen, was born in Los Angeles. On December 8, 2012, the then–15-year-old was arrested by Eritrean authorities at the Sudanese border while attempting to flee Eritrea. Her father, Ali Abdu, Eritrea’s former minister of information, had earlier fled following a failed military coup in which he was suspected to have been involved. Ciham has not been charged and is being held without trial. Her whereabouts are unknown.
Name: David Barnes
Age: 67
Country: Imprisoned in Russia
Year Imprisoned: 2024
A native of Huntsville, Alabama, David Barnes shared custody of his two sons with his Russian ex-wife, Svetlana Koptyaeva. During their divorce proceedings in 2018, Koptyaeva accused Barnes of sexually abusing their children. Texas authorities investigated the allegations and found no evidence of abuse.
In 2019, Koptyaeva took their children out of the U.S. in breach of their custody agreement and federal law. A Texas judge appointed Barnes sole managing conservator in August 2020, but the action was unenforceable as the children were outside the court’s jurisdiction.
In December 2021, Barnes flew to Russia to apply for visitation rights. His wife repeated the allegations of sexual abuse to Russian authorities. Barnes was detained in January 2022. After a trial, he was convicted of sexual abuse in February 2024 and was sentenced to 21 years in a penal colony.
He is not on the State Department’s list of wrongfully detained Americans.
Name: Wilbert Joseph Castañeda Gomez
Age: 37
Country: Venezuela
Year Arrested: 2024
In September 2024, Wilbert Joseph Castañeda Gomez, an active duty Navy SEAL, was in Venezuela on personal travel when he was arrested along with two other U.S. citizens, David Estrella and Aaron Barrett Logan. The three were charged with plotting to overthrow Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.
Maduro’s interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, said the Americans and three other foreign nationals were part of a CIA-led attack on the Venezuelan leadership. The State Department described the allegations of U.S. involvement in a plot to overthrow Maduro as “categorically false.”
Name: David Estrella
Age: Unknown
Country: Venezuela
Year Arrested: 2024
In September 2024, the U.S. named David Estrella as one of three Americans detained in Venezuela, along with Wilbert Joseph Castañeda Gomez, an active duty Navy SEAL, and Aaron Barrett Logan.
Name: Aaron Barrett Logan
Age: Unknown
Country: Venezuela
Year Arrested: 2024
In September 2024, the U.S. named Aaron Barrett Logan as one of three Americans detained in Venezuela, along with Wilbert Joseph Castañeda Gomez, an active duty Navy SEAL, and David Estrella.
Name: Sagui Dekel-Chen
Age: 36
Country: Held in Gaza
Year Kidnapped: 2023
Sagui Dekel-Chen was born in Connecticut and grew up in Israel. As a teenager, he played for Israel’s junior national baseball team. In recent years, he worked as a handyman, repurposing buses into homes, classrooms, and grocery stores.
On October 7, Dekel-Chen was 200 yards away from his home in Kibbutz Nir Oz, where he lived with his pregnant wife and two daughters, when he saw Hamas terrorists infiltrate his community.
He was last heard from at 9:30 a.m. that day. He was taken into Gaza by Hamas after defending his family, who hid in their safe room.
Name: Ryan Corbett
Age: 41
Country: Imprisoned in Afghanistan
Year Arrested: 2022
Ryan Corbett is a businessman from New York. He moved to Afghanistan with his wife and children in January 2010, but evacuated when the Taliban took over in August 2021 after the U.S. withdrawal. In January 2022, Ryan returned to train staff working for Bloom Afghanistan, an organization he formed to help Afghans start businesses.
On August 10, 2022, Ryan and three colleagues were detained by the government without charges. His colleagues, a German and two Afghans, were released later that year, but Ryan remains in custody and former detainees say he is in poor health. The Taliban has not charged Ryan with any crime, though Taliban intelligence officers have accused him of “anti-state activities.”
The State Department designates his detention as wrongful.
Name: Aban Elias
Age: 62
Country: Iraq
Year Arrested: 2004
Aban Elias was born in Iraq and moved to the U.S. with his family to flee the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. He obtained American citizenship and lived in Denver, Colorado.
He was hired as a contractor by the U.S. government after the invasion of Iraq. Aban was abducted in May 2004, only a few weeks after arriving in the country. A group calling itself the Islamic Anger Brigade claimed responsibility.
The group released a video to the Arabic-language TV network Al Arabiya that showed a blindfolded Elias begging for his life. A spokesman for the FBI in October declined to comment on the current status of the case.
Name: Marc Fogel
Age: 63
Country: Detained in Russia
Year Arrested: 2021
Marc Fogel was born in Butler County, Pennsylvania. He taught school abroad for 35 years, most recently in Russia, where he worked at the Anglo-American School in Moscow for nine years.
On August 14, 2021, Fogel traveled to Russia to complete his final year at the school before retiring. He was arrested at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport and charged with possessing and smuggling about half an ounce of marijuana, which a U.S. doctor had prescribed for medical use to treat his chronic back pain.
Fogel spent 10 months in pretrial detention and then pleaded guilty to the drug offenses in the hope of a lenient sentence. But on June 16, 2022, he was sentenced to 14 years in a maximum security penal colony. The U.S. has called for Fogel’s release on humanitarian grounds based on his deteriorating health.
On August 1, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan described Fogel as “wrongfully detained” at a press conference, but the State Department hasn’t yet issued its official designation.
Name: George Glezmann
Age: 66
Country: Detained in Afghanistan
Year Arrested: 2022
George Glezmann worked as an airline mechanic for Delta Airlines in Atlanta. In December 2022, he was taken by the Taliban while visiting Kabul as a tourist. He is being held without charges.
In October 2023, the State Department designated Glezmann as wrongfully detained. In August, Glezmann’s family notified the White House they intended to negotiate with the Taliban directly as they felt they hadn’t gotten enough help from the Biden administration, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The State Department recognizes him as wrongfully detained.
Name: Mahmoud Habibi
Age: Unknown
Country: Detained in Afghanistan
Year Kidnapped: 2022
Afghan American businessman Mahmoud Habibi was working as a contractor for Asia Consultancy Group, a telecommunications company in Kabul. On August 10, 2022, he and his driver were abducted from his car near his home.
The FBI believes the Taliban kidnapped Habibi along with 29 other employees of the consultancy, the rest of whom have been freed. He is on the State Department’s list of wrongfully detained Americans.
Name: Andre Khachatoorian
Age: 38/39
Country: Imprisoned in Russia
Year Arrested: 2023
Andre Khachatoorian is a native of Southern California. In December 2021, he was traveling to Armenia via Moscow. During his layover, he requested access to his checked luggage to retrieve medication, when law enforcement noticed his locked firearm case containing his licensed, secured gun.
His family says he was then removed from the airport and coerced into applying for a Russian visa. On February 23, 2023, Khachatoorian was convicted of arms smuggling and sentenced to 8.5 years in prison.
He is not on the State Department’s list of wrongfully detained prisoners.
Name: Ksenia Khavana (née Karelina)
Age: 34
Country: Detained in Russia
Year Arrested: 2024
Ksenia Karelina was born in Russia, and immigrated to the U.S. in 2012. She worked at a beauty spa in Los Angeles. In January 2024, she was detained in Russia while visiting family and charged with “petty hooliganism.” According to CBS News, the charge was later upgraded to treason.
The amateur ballerina had transferred $51.80 from a U.S. bank account to a Ukrainian aid organization. In August, she was sentenced to 12 years in a penal colony.
The State Department has not yet designated her as wrongfully detained.
Name: Michael Travis Leake
Age: 53
Country: Imprisoned in Russia
Year Arrested: 2023
Michael Travis Leake, from Bakersfield, California, is a former paratrooper. He moved to Russia over a decade ago to work as an English teacher and a musician and performed with Russian rock bands, some of which criticized the Russian government.
In 2014, Leake appeared in a Russia-based episode of the television show Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown. Leake, who then managed the band Louna, spoke about using music as a form of dissent and warned Bourdain that audio interference he experienced while recording their interview was likely from the KGB.
In June 2023, Leake was arrested in Russia on charges of selling the drug mephedrone, a synthetic stimulant. A video emerged after his arrest of Leake saying he did not admit guilt or even know what the charges against him were.
In July 2024, Moscow’s Khamovnitchesky Court found Leake guilty and sentenced him to 13 years in a maximum security prison colony.
Name: Yuri Malev
Age: 60
Country: Imprisoned in Russia
Year Arrested: December 2023
Yuri Malev is a dual U.S.-Russian citizen and was a resident of Brooklyn, New York. In December 2023, he was arrested in Russia over social media posts in which he was alleged to have denigrated the Saint George’s ribbon, a symbol of Russian military valor. In his posts, he criticized Russian leader Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine.
In June, he was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison on charges of “rehabilitating Nazism.”
He is not on the State Department’s list of wrongfully detained prisoners.
Name: Paul Edwin Overby
Age: 82
Country: Held in Afghanistan
Year Disappeared: 2014
Paul Overby, from western Massachusetts, is a freelance writer and author of the book Holy Blood: An Inside View of the Afghan War (1993). Overby was last seen in Afghanistan’s Khost province. He was on his way to Pakistan in the hope of interviewing Sirajuddin Haqqani, leader of the Haqqani network, a Taliban faction, for his new book.
The State Department is offering a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the location, recovery, and return of Overby, and the Justice Department is offering a further $1 million. (As for why the government is offering rewards for some people and not others, a spokesperson for the FBI told The Free Press that the bureau “uses investigative publicity and tools, such as reward money, on a variety of investigations if it is believed to be helpful and can benefit the investigations.”)
Name: Radim (Dean) Sadeq
Age: 67
Country: Iraq
Year Kidnapped: 2004
Radim Sadeq, a Lebanese American contractor from Charlotte, North Carolina, was working for a phone company in Iraq when gunmen abducted him from his home in Baghdad on November 2, 2004. His captors released a video of him days later. He has not been heard from since. In October, a spokesman for the FBI declined to comment on the current status of the case.
Name: Theary Seng
Age: 53
Country: Imprisoned in Cambodia
Year Sentenced: June 2022
Born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Seng is a Khmer American human rights lawyer and activist. In 2022, she was convicted of treason in a Cambodian court along with 60 other opposition figures, and sentenced to six years’ imprisonment.
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention calls her incarceration “arbitrary, politically motivated, and in violation of international law.”
In December 2023, she was treated in hospital following a 10-day hunger strike.
She is not on the State Department’s list of wrongfully detained prisoners, although spokesman Matthew Miller has condemned her arrest and sentencing.
Name: Zack Shahin
Age: 60
Country: United Arab Emirates
Year Arrested: 2008
Zack Shahin is from Texas and worked as an executive for PepsiCo, focusing on the company’s operations in the Middle East. In 2004 Shahin moved to the UAE to work for the Dubai Islamic Bank, where he served as CEO of the bank’s real estate development firm, Deyaar. Shahin was recruited to head Deyaar by Mohammed Khalfan bin Kharbash, the country's minister of finance and chairman of the Dubai Islamic Bank.
In March 2008, Shahin was abducted by state security while attending a meeting to discuss a planned audit of his firm. He was held for 17 days in solitary confinement during which he was “deprived of food, water, sleep, and was threatened, humiliated, tortured, and forced to sign both blank and Arabic documents that he could not read,” according to the Foley Foundation.
Around this time, Kharbash, who had close ties to Dubai’s ruling family, was also under scrutiny for potential fraud and was removed from his government position, though his case never went to trial and he was never formally charged or imprisoned.
Shahin, however, was tried as a government employee, despite the private classification of his firm, Deyaar. In the UAE, there are harsher penalties for individuals designated as public officials. Fox News reports that he was charged with “fraud, embezzlement, and other financial crimes,” which his family says are “false and politically motivated.”
He was detained for 10 years without conviction. In 2017, he was finally sentenced to life imprisonment.
The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention recognizes Shahin’s imprisonment as wrongful. But the State Department has not made a similar finding.
Name: Keith Siegel
Age: 63
Country: Gaza
Year Kidnapped: 2023
Kieth Siegel was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. On October 7, 2023, Keith and his wife, Aviva, were taken by Hamas from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where they had been living for 40 years. Aviva was released in the November 2023 hostage deal. She says that when they were dragged from their homes, Keith suffered fractured ribs and a gunshot wound to his hand.
On April 27, Keith appeared in a Hamas propaganda video, the first proof of life since his abduction.
Name: Thomas Stwalley
Age: 63
Country: Imprisoned in Russia
Year Arrested: 2018
Thomas Stwalley, from Crawfordsville, Indiana, always “wanted to go fast on everything he did,” according to his brother, Russell. Thomas had a flair for music and used to practice drums by the tool shed.
Around 2008, Thomas moved from the U.S. to teach English as a second language abroad. He mostly lived in Russia, where he spoke the language fluently, but also spent time in Kazakhstan and Dubai. Thomas was working as a musician in Russia when he was arrested in June 2017 on what he told The Wall Street Journal was a false charge of intent to distribute marijuana.
His brother, Russell, said Thomas had “a tiny little amount” of marijuana on him for personal use, but was “detained by two people that proceeded to beat the hell out of him and then hauled off to the police station,” where he was charged with having three truckloads of marijuana in his apartment—“complete lies,” his brother said.
“Apparently, [the Russian authorities] showed the State Department these pictures of the trucks lined up outside. His apartment was about 500 square feet. You couldn’t put all of it in the back of a pickup truck, and you have three semi-loads for this proof?”
Stwalley was sentenced to 11 years in the IK-17 penal colony in Mordovia, where he became friendly with Jimmy Wilgus. The State Department has not yet classified him as a wrongful detainee.
Name: Austin Tice
Age: 43
Country: Syria
Year Kidnapped: 2012
Austin Tice from Plano, Texas, is a captain in the Marines who was about to begin his final year of law school at Georgetown University. In the summer of 2012, Tice traveled to Syria to cover the civil war as a freelance journalist. He was detained at a checkpoint in Damascus.
His captors released a short video of him surrounded by gunmen, titled “Austin Tice Is Alive.” He has not been heard from since. The FBI is offering $1 million for information leading to his safe location, recovery, and return.
On December 8, 2024, President Biden said the U.S. believes Tice is alive. “We think we can get him back, but we have no direct evidence of that yet,” Biden said. Following the collapse of the Assad regime, Roger Carstens, the special envoy for hostage affairs, travelled to Beirut “to leave no stone unturned,” the State Department said.
On December 11, The Times of London published an interview with Saher al-Ahmad, a Syrian undercover journalist, who was imprisoned by the Assad regime and believes he was imprisoned alongside Tice until his release in 2022. Ahmad fears Tice may have been killed by Israeli air strikes “as the regime collapsed.”
Name: Nelson Wells Jr.
Age: 51
Country: Imprisoned in China
Year Arrested: 2014
Nelson Wells Jr., from New Orleans, Louisiana, was living in Japan with his wife and children. He suffered chronic health issues after a car accident. Later, he visited China, where he was arrested in May 2014 and charged with attempting to smuggle drugs out of the country. He denies the charges. Wells Jr. was sentenced to life imprisonment, which was later commuted to 22 years.
His family told ABC News that Wells Jr. is suffering from “debilitating chronic pain, seizures, malnutrition, internal issues, dental pain, severe depression, and thoughts of self-harm.”
He is not on the State Department’s list of wrongfully detained prisoners.
Name: James Vincent Wilgus
Age: 55
Country: Russia
Year Arrested: 2016
James Vincent (Jimmy) Wilgus was born in New Jersey. On November 7, 2016, Wilgus was arrested in Russia while working on a movie score.
The Wall Street Journal reported in 2023 that Wilgus says he was falsely charged with a sex crime. His father says there were multiple charges, all of which were false, and some impossible since Jimmy was not in the region at the time of the alleged offenses.
His father, James Wilgus Sr., says Jimmy was grabbed from the street, beaten by police, and told by a translator that he had to sign a document he didn’t understand to secure his release. Jimmy learned only later that he’d signed a confession to crimes he says he didn’t commit.
After nearly 18 months at the detention center, Wilgus was sentenced to 12.5 years at IK-17 penal colony in Mordovia.
In July, Judicial Watch, a conservative activist group, filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the State Department to acquire “all records related to why the department has not issued a ‘wrongful’ detention designation for Jimmy Wilgus.”
Josh Code contributed to this report.