WASHINGTON, November 19 (Sputnik) — The United States will not pay ransoms for those Americans, who are being held hostage overseas, despite US President Barack Obama's request to review the US response to such situations, White House spokesperson Josh Earnest said.
"The reason we [the United States] are not reviewing the policy as it relates to not paying ransom is that our views on this are clear… we don't want to put other American citizens at an even risk when they are around the globe," Earnest said at a press briefing on Tuesday.
Last summer Obama ordered a review of the US response to freeing the growing number of Americans hostages who were being held overseas.
"Based on our insight into the way that ISIL works… they rely on these sort of ransom payments as a very important source of their financing," Earnest said. "So shutting off that [ransom payments] source of financing is an important part of our strategy for defeating them."
Earnest added that the US Department of Defense, the Department of State, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other members of the intelligence community have been reviewing the US hostage response efforts, but would not say when the review would be concluded.
Amid the rise of Islamic State (IS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), terrorist group and its heavy reliance on funding through ransom payment, the United States says that not paying hostage ransoms is an important part of its strategy against defeating IS.
On Sunday, American aid worker Peter Kassig was executed by IS fighters after he was captured by the group in Eastern Syria in October 2013.
