(NewsNation) — Family members of those being wrongfully detained or held hostage in other countries called for more attention from the Biden Administration during a Tuesday news conference.
Recently, members of the Bring Our Families Home campaign wrote a letter to the White House, criticizing the president for “ignoring” several of their appeals to meet.
“All of us need to meet with you before it’s too late, and for you to use all tools to #BringThemHome,” the letter said.
On Tuesday, Harrison Li, son of Kai Li, who’s been imprisoned in China since 2018, said as “individual, ordinary American families,” it can be easy for their voices to be drowned out.
The only way to cut through the bureaucracy and get heard, Harrison Li said, is to go to Biden himself.
“For our family, it’s been it’s been way too long,” Harrison Li said. “I’ve spent a third of my life without my dad, and it’s really past time for him to come home.”
Maryam Kamalmaz is the daughter of Majd Kamalmaz, a psychologist who traveled to Syria to visit an elderly family member. According to the FBI, Kamalmaz was stopped at a Syrian Government checkpoint in Mezzeh and has not been seen or heard from since that day.
Although she and other family members who spoke Tuesday have requested “multiple meetings” with Biden, they have yet to have one.
“This has ruined our lives,” Maryam Kamalmaz said. “It’s been really difficult… It’s not only so painful that your loved one has gone missing…but it’s excruciatingly painful when you have to beg the government to do something and beg for the same type of attention and care that the US government is presenting to other families and yet, not to us.”
Aida Dagher, the sister-in-law of Zack Shahin, who has been detained in the United Arab Emirates, had his 56-year jail sentence denounced as “arbitrary” by a United Nations Working Group. Now, his family is hoping Shahin, who faces a number of illnesses, will be released on medical grounds.
“He’s so scared,” Dagher said. “We don’t want him back in a box. We want him back alive so that he can spend whatever is left of his life next to his family next to his friends.”
Katherine Swidan, whose son Mark is on death row in China, says she is exploring all her options, but the United States need to do more to bring the wrongfully detained back.
“I don’t believe that they’re top priority,” Swidan said.
Mark Swidan, his mother said, has lost “everything” in the lost ten years. Still, he had the U.S. consolute buy her a Christmas present over the holidays.
“I’m already 73. I want to see him one time before I die,” Katherine Swidan said. “He’s my best friend. He’s a good man.”
While Katherine acknowledges that negotiations aren’t necessarily easy, she wants to see the U.S. government show strength.
“There is a way to bring these people home,” she said. “They need to stop cherry-picking and bring them home.”
