MOSCOW, September 12 (RIA Novosti) - In an interview with CNN, Diane Foley, the mother of US journalist, James Foley, beheaded by the Islamic State, said she was "embarrassed and appalled" by the US government's attitude towards her son's case, CNN reports.
"As an American, I was embarrassed and appalled. I think our efforts to get Jim freed were an annoyance [to the U.S. government]," Diane Foley told CNN Thursday. "It didn't seem to be in (U.S.) strategic interest, if you will."
Diane Foley said that before the beheading, President Barack Obama's administration told her family not to inform the media about the situation and that "the government would not exchange prisoners", or engage in "military action" in order to free her son.
She also said that the US government advised against raising a ransom since the family might have ended up being prosecuted within the frameworks of law.
"We were just told to trust that he would be freed somehow, miraculously," Diane Foley told CNN. "And he wasn't, was he?"
Diane Foley criticized the US strategies of bombing and engaging in military action against Islamic State militants.
"I guess all I'm trying to say is that our government needs to be shrewder, smarter, (more) willing to negotiate with these people who hate us, so that we can find better ways to rid ourselves of terror," Foley said.
She also stated that her son "believed, till the end, that his country would come to (his) aid".
Foley went missing in Syria in November 2012 while covering the country's civil war. On August 19, the IS released a video of him being beheaded by a militant with a strong British accent.
The IS called Foley's death revenge for US airstrikes against militants in Iraq and warned that Sotloff, who had been kidnapped in August 2013, would be the next hostage to be killed if the attacks continued.
