Last month, Layla Shweikani’s parents received the news they had been dreading for two years. Their daughter, a 26-year-old Chicago native, had died in Syria.
Shweikani travelled to the country in September 2015 to help people affected by the war raging there, but was arrested by Syrian authorities just six months after her arrival and charged with terrorism offences.
Less than a year later she was executed following a trial that lasted for 30 seconds, according to rights groups following her case.
In the weeks since her death was confirmed, neither the White House nor the US State Department have issued a public statement on the circumstances of how she died.
As the global outcry over the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi continues to reverberate, many have struggled to understand why her killing has failed to elicit similar attention.
That silence is indicative of how two successive US administrations failed Shweikani and her family, both in her time of need as a prisoner and after her brutal death, according to people involved with the efforts to have her freed.
This is both depressing and absurd. A green card holder gets kidnapped and murdered resulting in a massive media outcry but when a citizen gets arrested and executed in a show trial we get crickets. Of course, both acts were terrible, and the Kashoggi case was probably much easier for the media to pick up on and confirm. Yet still, it doesn’t even seem like much US media has reported on it at all after the fact. At least Shweikani’s Congressman has taken notice...
Thoughts, NSG?
