Is Brittney Griner a Russian hostage?

In Hollywood movies, hostage-taking is often mounted as an act carried out by militant or criminal groups operating independently of a country’s government. However, now U.S. citizens are more frequently taken hostage by foreign governments than by non-state actors. Hardly, it seems that the detention of WNBA champ Brittney Griner by Russian powers may be part of that trend.

The publicly let go details about Griner’s case are scattered. This may be because of a desire by the U.S. government, the WNBA, and her family to keep matters quiet for strategic reasons or for other factors, such as cultural inequality in missing people coverage. But what we know doesn’t support the theory that this is just a procedure arrest.

First, the timing is unsure. Griner was detained in February, during Russia’s preparations to conquer Ukraine. Then, the news about her detention was concealed. Russia released the information only later, on March 5, at one of the biggest points of tension between the U.S. and Russia in ten years. And Griner was purportedly rejected consular access — a basic right of any overseas national in detention — until March 23. We also have no independent verification that the cannabis oil charges the Russians have limited at her are true.

While each case is unique, Griner’s included, understanding the broader pattern of how these detentions happen and the travel to release is key to fighting the practice of hostage-taking, which takes families and communities.

Americans are being chosen detained for political grip all over the world, some of them in Russia, Cuba, China, Venezuela, and Iran. Many are kept in poor custody conditions and subjected to mental and physical punishment, shortage of medical treatment, and denial of legal counsel and fair trial rights. They are wives, mothers, husbands, fathers, and children who usually have no connection to the invented charges against them. They are being tortured for political conditions they endure no responsibility for.

And this wasn’t just a U.S. problem. Nationals and residents of the U.K., Germany, France, Sweden, Belgium, Lebanon, Armenia, Canada, and more have all suffered from so-called hostage diplomacy, in which they are held by foreign states for political reach.

State-sponsored hostage-taking is a true world’s largest problem, and it requires a robust global solution. As a country deeply affected by hostage-taking, the U.S. should begin by evacuating its hostage-taking prevention and accountability strategies. The Obama administration undertook a major study of U.S. hostage policy, which resulted in a stronger interagency framework to support families, including the modeling of a special envoy for hostages at the State Department in 2015.

Under current President Donald Trump, hostage recovery efforts went through a revolution. Presidents both Republican and Democratic have long held to a “no-concessions” hostage policy, in which huge payments and blackmail were considered off-limits for fear of motivating more hostage-taking in the long term. Trump pushed the boundaries of that policy with prisoner trades and handled recovery efforts with a more personal touch, as he himself welcomed hostages home with shoots in the Oval Office. While few hostages’ families cheer that visibility, other experts questioned whether the link would motivate hostile foreign governments to take more U.S. citizens hostage to force power and get a retort from the president himself.

President Joe Biden has taken a more downcast approach, giving members of his administration to be the public faces controlling hostage files. However, Trump’s disordering of 10years of U.S. hostage policy warrants an assessment of what worked and what didn’t and which assumptions hold up under an information analysis. Regardless of a president’s personal style, the matter of hostage-taking should be raised to a priority within the administration, and any successful strategies should be used more widely.