The father of a young American woman taken hostage by the Islamic State condemned the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation for stripping their “American Hostage Freedom Award” from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in an interview with The Daily Caller.
He also expressed his profound dismay at the partisan hatred that has seemingly crept into every facet of American society.
Carl Mueller’s daughter, Kayla Mueller, was a young Christian woman from Prescott, Arizona, who “was drawn to alleviate the suffering of Syrian refugees,” according to her family. After graduating college in 2009, Kayla worked with humanitarian aid groups in India, Israel and Palestinian territories. Her plan to work in Africa changed when civil war broke out in Syria, and in 2012 Kayla moved to southern Turkey, where she worked with Support to Life and the Danish Refugee Council to aid those fleeing the conflict.
Kayla was kidnapped on Aug. 4, 2013 by ISIS militants, who ambushed her vehicle as she left a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Aleppo. For 18 months, she was held hostage and reportedly abused personally by ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Refusing to convert to Islam during her imprisonment, those who were imprisoned with her claimed that she clung to her Christian faith, even defending it to the notoriously brutal “Jihadi John.” (EXCLUSIVE: Andrew Brunson’s American Pastor Describes Harrowing Turkish Courtroom Experience)
ISIS claimed that Kayla was killed during coalition airstrikes in early 2015, at the age of 26. Though it confirmed her death, the U.S. government reached no official conclusion regarding the cause of it, and her parents remain unsure of her ultimate fate.