Sunday, May 15, 2011

When The US Fails One of Its Citizens

Do you know these names? (k/t = DK)
 Alan Gross - American held in a Cuban prison but who has the backing of Hillary Clinton who condemns his jail sentence..

Laura Ling and Euna Lee - two American journalists held in North Korea and freed following a trip there by Bill Clinton.

Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal - Americans suspected as spies by Iran. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that holding the other two and prosecuting them was baseless. "We do not believe that there is any basis whatsoever for them to be put on trial and we regret that they and their families are being subjected to a criminal system that we do not think in any way reflects their actions," she said.

Do you know this name - Adiva Mirza Soleyman Kalimia?

Who?

Well, she was an Israel-born Jewish woman of Iranian descent who held American citizenship

She

...and her Armenian Christian husband were executed in Iran over two months ago, an Iranian human rights group reported last Thursday.  The Human Rights Activists News Agency claimed Adiva Mirza Soleyman Kalimia and her husband Varjan Petrosian were hung on March 14 at Evin Prison, known for its political prisoners' wing, Yedioth Ahronoth reported.  The human rights group quoted the Iranian court's confirmation of the executions. Two other men and one woman who remained unidentified were also executed along with the couple.  Soleyman Kalimia was born in Jerusalem in 1956 to a Jewish family of Iranian descent. At one point she moved to Miami and eventually received US citizenship. According to her family, she had two passports: American and European. Her son lives in Europe.


What did official US do?

Michael Posner, the assistant secretary of state for human rights, had not named the couple when he testified Wednesday at a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Iran's human rights that a Jewish woman and her Armenian Christian husband had been executed in Iran for undisclosed reasons.

Are you confident the America will back you if you get into trouble?

^

2 comments:

miryam said...

I am a home-born US citizen, and I believe America would not back me if in trouble in another country. I'm an average middle-aged nothing-special American woman, but my beliefs and practices would not be supported by the US gov. I don't trust them at all!

Anonymous said...

It shouldn't be the US Government to retrieve citizens not assigned to hostile countries. What possesses someone to go to lavish vacation spots as N. Korea or Iran anyway when there's a good chance you'll get kidnapped or worse since these places hate americans? Dumb asses!