Slain journalist James Foley's mom says federal officials threatened the Foley family with criminal charges if they raised money to pay ransom to free him. The "devastating" message didn't surprise her, she told ABC News, but the way it was delivered shocked her.
"I was surprised there was so little compassion," Diane Foley told ABC News today of the three separate warnings she said U.S. officials gave the family about the illegality of paying ransom to the terror group ISIS. "It just made me realize that these people talking to us had no idea what it was like to be the family of someone abducted… I'm sure [the U.S. official] didn't mean it the way he said it, but we were between a rock and a hard place. We were told we could do nothing… meanwhile our son was being beaten and tortured every day."
Earlier this week five current and former officials with direct knowledge of the Foley case confirmed the alleged threats were made.
"It was an utterly idiotic thing to do that came across as if [the U.S. official] had the compassion of an anvil," said a former official who has advised the family.
[PHOTO: 2012 photo posted on freejamesfoley.org showing James Foley, covering the civil war in Aleppo, Syria.]
