Before the arrival of the colonists, the Native Americans had already secured a foothold over the vast expanses of America. Initially, the Native Americans were treated with an almost cursory respect as the new settlers and pilgrims were afraid, apprehensive, yet friendly and hopeful. The newcomers befriended many and made what they thought were close ties with their new brethren. Unfortunately, it was not to last, and disease coupled with the settlers’ ravenous desire to claim the land as their own destroyed everything the native peoples held dear. However, most of these mistakes have since been admitted, and reparations have been made. Fortunately, history has not forgotten the many important faces and contributions of the original Americans. In honor of the United States’ Thanksgiving, here are 15 such heroes.

15 Red Cloud
1822–1909

Perhaps one of the most capable warriors from the Oglala Lakota (Sioux) tribes ever faced by the U.S. military, Makhpiya Luta, his Sioux name, led his people in what is known as Red Cloud’s War. This battle was for the rights to the area known as Powder River Country in northern Wyoming and southern Montana. Eventually, he led his people during their time on the reservation.

14 Cochise
1815–1874

Though actually pronounced “K-you Ch-Ish,” this Apache leader is second only to Geronimo when it comes to that tribe’s historical significance. Often described as having a classical Indian frame. He was muscular, large for the time, and known to wear his long, black hair in a traditional ponytail. Cochise aided in the uprising to resist intrusions by Mexicans and Americans in the 19th century.

13 Maria Tallchief
1925–2013

Born Elizabeth Marie “Betty” Tallchief to an Osage Nation father, she eventually became a well-known ballerina and is considered America’s first major prima ballerina. In 1947, Maria began dancing with the New York City Ballet until her retirement in 1965. Soon after, she founded the Chicago City Ballet and remained its artistic director for many years. Since 1997, she has been an adviser in Chicago-area dance schools and continues to astound future dancers with her always ahead-of-her-time abilities and was featured in a PBS special from 2007 to 2010.

12 Squanto
1581–1622

Assisting the Pilgrims during their first harsh winter, Tisquantum (Squanto) from the Patuxet tribe befriended the group to see them safely through to spring. In 1608, alas, Squanto and several others were kidnapped by Georgie Weymouth and taken aboard a ship to England. Though eventually earning a living and learning the English language, Squanto made his return home in 1613 aboard John Smith’s ship, only to find his tribe completely wiped out by the plague.

11 Crazy Horse
1840–1877

With a name in his native Lakota language, Thasuka Witko, which literally means “His-Horse-is-Crazy,” this Native American was actually born with the name: “Cha-O-Ha.” In Lakotan, it means “In the Wilderness,” and he was often called Curly due to his hair. In the Great Sioux War of 1876, Crazy Horse led a combined group of nearly 1,500 Lakota and Cheyenne in a surprise attack against General George Crook’s force of 1,000 English men and 300 Crow and Shoshone warriors. Though not substantial in terms of lives lost, the battle nearly prevented Crook from joining up with General Custer, ensuring Custer’s subsequent defeat at the Battle of Little Bighorn. Crazy Horse opposed the U.S. government in their various decisions on how to handle Indian affairs.

10 Sacajawea
1788-1812

Sacajawea is most well known for accompanying Meriwether Lewis and William Clark during their Corps of Discovery expedition of the western United States in 1806. She was born in a Shoshone tribe as Agaidika, or “Salmon Eater,” in 1788. In February of 1805, just after meeting Lewis and Clark, Lewis assisted in the birth of her son, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau. Her face now appears on the dollar coin.

9 Chief Joseph
1840–1904

Chief Joseph was a prominent figure among the Nez Perce Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest. He is best remembered as a leader during the Nez Perce War in 1877. As white settlers moved farther west and into the vast lands of the Nez Perce, Chief Joseph did not sign a treaty that would move his people to a reservation in Idaho. He chose to flee rather than face the U.S. Army sent to remove them forcefully. He was stopped only 40 miles from the Canadian border, where he gave a surrender speech, and his people eventually settled on a reservation in northcentral Washington. Chief Joseph died in 1904, never having been able to return to his much-loved homeland in the Wallowa Valley of Oregon.

8 Pontiac
1720–1769

Known in his Ottawa tongue as Obwandiyag, Chief Pontiac is most well known for his defense of the Great Lakes Region of the U.S. from the British troop invasion and occupation. In 1763, Pontiac and 300 of his followers attempted to take Fort Detroit by surprise. Eventually, the revolt rose to 900 plus Native Americans, and they eventually took the Fort at The Battle of Bloody Run. Though historically a prominent figure, many are still unsure about his real importance and whether or not he was a mere follower rather than a leader. Increasingly ostracized, he was assassinated by a Peoria Indian in Illinois in 1769.

7 Geronimo
1829–1909

Geronimo (Chiricahua: “one who yawns,” often spelled Goyathlay or Goyahkla in English) was a prominent Native American leader of the Chiricahua Apache who defended his people against the encroachment of the U.S. onto their tribal lands for over 25 years. While Geronimo said he was never actually a chief, he was rather a military leader. As a Chiricahua Apache, this meant he was also a spiritual leader. He consistently urged raids and war upon many Mexican and later U.S. groups. Geronimo eventually went on to marry 6 wives, an Apache tradition. He staged what was to be the last great Native American uprising and eventually moved to a reservation, often permitting to appear at fairs and schools.

6 Tecumseh
1768–1813

A Shawnee leader whose name means “Panther in the Sky,” Tecumseh became well known for taking disparate tribes’ folk and maintaining a hold on the land that was rightfully theirs. In 1805, a religious native rebirth led by Tenskwatawa emerged. Tenskwatawa urged natives to reject the ways of the English and to stop handing over their lands to the United States. Opposing Tenskwatawa was the Shawnee leader Black Hoof, who worked to maintain a peaceful relationship with the United States. By 1808, tensions built and compelled Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh to move further northwest and establish the village of Prophetstown near Battle Ground, Indiana. He died in the War of 1812.

5 Sitting Bull
1831–1890

Sitting Bull (Sioux: Tatanka Iyotake—first named Slon-he or, literally, slow) was a Hunkpapa Lakota medicine man and holy man. He is famous in both American and Native American history, mostly for his major victory at the Battle of Little Bighorn against General Custer, where his ‘premonition’ of defeating them became a reality. Even today, his name is synonymous with Native American culture, and he is considered one of the most famous Native Americans ever.

4 Black Hawk
1767–1838

Though not a traditional tribe chief, even after inheriting a very important medicine bundle, Black Hawk was more well known as a War Chief. In his tribe’s (Sauk’s) tongue, his name, Makataimeshekiakiak, means “Be a large black hawk.” During the War of 1812, Black Hawk—the English shortened his name—became a fierce and powerful opponent. First fighting on the side of the British, Black Hawk eventually led a band of Sauk and Fox against settlers in Illinois and Wisconsin, eventually dying in Iowa. His legend is kept alive by many claiming to be directly related, like Jim Thorpe. This is, however, a myth.

3 Sequoiah
1767–1843

Though the exact location of Sequoiah’s birth and death are unknown due to historically inaccurate writings, he is well known through translation and spoken accounts of having grown up with his mother in Tuskegee, Tennessee. Sequoyah ( S-si-quo-ya in Cherokee), known as George Guess, Guest, or Gist, was a silversmith who invented the Cherokee Syllabary, earning him a place on the list of inventors of writing systems as well.

2 Pocahontas
1595–1617

Having taken many liberties with her overall appearance, Disney created the image many of us believe to be what Pocahontas may have looked like. This is far from accurate. Though the film’s history is similarly flawed, it does hold some truths. Pocahontas was a Native American woman who married an Englishman named John Rolfe, a Jamestown settler, and became a celebrity in London in the last year of her life. She was a daughter of Wahunsunacock (also known as Chief or Emperor Powhatan), who presided over an area comprised of almost all of the neighboring tribes in Virginia (called Tenakomakah then). Her formal names were Matoaka and Amonute; ‘Pocahontas’ was a childhood nickname referring to her frolicsome nature. In her last days, she went by Rebecca Rolfe, choosing to live an English life by abandoning her Native American heritage.

1 Hiawatha
c. 1540

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the story “The Song of Hiawatha” loosely based on an actual Native American. Though very little is known of the historical events in which Hiawatha was a part, he was a great peacemaker and spiritual guide of the Onondaga tribe of North American Indians, to whom Indian tradition attributes the formation of what became known as the Iroquois Confederacy. Longfellow’s story is well known, however, and much of what can be read can be found here.

Notable Omissions: Will Rogers, Tatonka, Robbie Robertson, Standing Bear

A strange thing happened on Western Frontier. During the days of Wild West, American pioneers were moving out into untamed and treacherous land. They were building their homes in a virtual war zone, on land stolen from the natives, and that meant that their lives—and the lives of their children—were constantly at risk.

Pioneer children, in the days of the American frontier, would often be kidnapped by raiding warriors. When Native American tribes lost their own children in wars with the settlers, they would even the score. They would raid a white village, take their children, and carry them back to their homes as hostages. But when their families tracked them down and tried to rescue them, sometimes, the children didn’t want to go home.

It was a strange phenomenon the settlers of America struggled to understand. Even Benjamin Franklin commented on it. “They become disgusted with our manner of life,” he once wrote about the white children captured by native tribes, “and take the first good opportunity of escaping again into the woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them.”^[1]

10 Frances Slocum

In 1835, a trader named George Ewing met an elderly woman of the Miami tribe named Maconaquah. She was in her sixties and a respected woman among the tribe, a widowed grandmother whose husband had been their chief. And so you can imagine his surprise when this old woman told him she had born to white parents.

As a child, he soon found out, Maconaquah’s name had been Frances Slocum, the daughter of a Quaker family who had been stolen away from home by Seneca warriors when she was five years old. A Miami family had bought her for a few pelts, and they’d raised her as their own.

57 years had passed since her capture. She’d grown up among the Miami, gotten married, seen her husband rise to chiefdom, given him four children, and raised them until they had children of their own.

Frances’s brothers hadn’t stopped looking for her since the day she was captured. When word got out that she was still alive, her brother Isaac met with the sister he’d lost decades ago and begged her to come home.

Frances, though, had forgotten how to speak English. Communicating through an interpreter, she told him, “I do not wish to live any better, or anywhere else, and I think the Great Spirit has permitted me to live so long because I have always lived with the Indians.”^[2]

True to her word, she stayed with her captors until the day she died—and she was buried next to the man who had been her husband.

9 Cynthia Ann Parker

Cynthia Ann Parker was nine years old when she was kidnapped by Comanche Indians in 1836.^[3] Her family was slaughtered, and she and four other children were dragged off into the night. Incredibly, she survived the whole horrific ordeal—but she wouldn’t survive going back home.

Four years after her capture, a trader named Williams heard that she was still alive, living among the Comanche. He rode into their camp and offered their chief any amount of money he wanted for her freedom. But when he was given the chance to speak to her, Parker simply stared at the ground and refused to say a word.

It took another 20 years before she was freed. A Texas Ranger force attacked the Comanche tribe, and upon seeing the white-skinned Parker among them, brought her back to her family. After 24 years living among the Comanche, though, Parker wasn’t happy about going home.

She had been there so long that she’d married one of the Comanche warriors, a man named Peta Nocona, who the Rangers had killed. As far as she was concerned, these men weren’t her liberators. They were murderers who had killed the man she loved.

They brought her to her uncle’s farm, but Parker didn’t want to be there. She repeatedly tried to run away, and when she realized she wouldn’t escape, she simply stopped eating. Rather than live among the white man, Cynthia Ann Parker starved herself until, weakened and plagued by influenza, she died.

8 Eunice Williams

Eunice Williams’s father got to see her change. After she was kidnapped by Mohawk warriors (reenactment pictured above), her father, Reverend John Williams, tracked her down and tried to get them to let him buy her freedom. The Mohawks refused to sell her, but they did let Rev. Williams talk to the daughter who would never be his again.

Young Eunice was terrified by everything around her. She told her father about the rituals the Mohawks performed, telling him they were “mocking the Devil.”^[4] She’d described a French Catholic missionary who’d been making her pray with him. “I don’t understand one word of [the prayers],” she told her father. “I hope it won’t do me any harm.”

Ten years later, a man named John Schuyler went to see Eunice—but now she was a completely different woman. She dressed and lived like a Mohawk. She had converted to Catholicism, married a warrior, and refused to speak English. He only got four words out of her the whole two hours he spoke to her. When he asked her to come home and see her father, Eunice simply said: “It may not be.”

7 Mary Jemison

Mary Jemison went through one of the most brutal kidnappings of any child. The story of how her Iroquois kidnappers massacred her family is absolutely horrifying—and yet, for some reason, she willingly stayed with her captors until the day she died.

Mary was 13 years old when a raiding party from the Iroquois Confederacy attacked her home. The Jemisons were forced to march through the woods, urged on by a warrior with a whip who lashed them whenever they slowed their step. They were not fed. If someone asked for water, the Iroquois warriors would force them to drink urine.

In the morning, Mary was pulled apart from her family and forced to march another day. She spent the day wondering what had become of her parents. Then, when nightfall came and they stopped to rest, she found out. While she watched, a warrior pulled her mother and father’s severed scalps out of a bag, scraped them clean, and dried them over a fire.^[5]

She remembered seeing her parents’ scalps dry for the rest of her life. In her old age, she would relate the story as if it was a swashbuckling adventure from an exciting childhood, but she never left her home. She moved in with a Seneca family, married a Delaware man, and, for reasons only Mary Jemison truly understood, became so attached to her family that she refused to ever leave their side, regardless of what had happened to her parents.

6 Herman Lehmann

Herman Lehmann didn’t see himself as a white boy living among the Apaches. To him, he was an Apache warrior through and through. He was kidnapped at age ten, and it changed him so much that when he was found eight years later, he couldn’t even remember his own name.

By then, Lehman was a respected warrior in his tribe who called himself “En Da.”^[6] He’d been made a petty chief for his ability to fight, and he’d joined the Apaches in raids and battles, even leading a charge right into a fort full of Texas Rangers.

All that changed, though, when a medicine man killed his adoptive father, an Apache warrior named Carnoviste. Lehman took his revenge and killed the medicine man. He then had to flee into the wilderness. For a year, he lived alone, hiding from the Apaches and the white men alike, until he finally settled down in a Native American reservation.

When his mother heard there was a white-skinned, blue-eyed boy on the reservation, she came out, praying it was her son. At first, she didn’t recognize him, and Herman was less than friendly. “I was an Indian,” he explained, “and I did not like them because they were palefaces.” But Herman’s sister spotted an old scar only he could have and, overcome with joy, cried out, “It’s Herman!”

The sound of the name puzzled him. Somehow, Herman thought he’d heard it before. It took a long moment, Herman would later recall, before he realized that he was hearing his own name.

5 Olive Oatman

When Olive Oatman wrote about her life as a Mohave captive, she called them “savages.” She wrote about them as if they were wild men and her time with them had been hell, but there were hints she wasn’t telling the truth. The biggest clue was as a plain as her face: the large, blue tattoo that covered her jaw.

Oatman had grown up in a Mormon family, but she was captured by Apaches while her family was traveling to California. The Apaches had sold her to a Mohave family that took her as her own, and for five years, she lived as a Mohave.

When Olive’s brother—the sole surviving member of her family—found her, her tribe was suffering through a famine, and many were starving. The people around her were dying, and, worried for her life, her adoptive family let her go home.

Oatman wrote a book about her experiences that criticized the Mohave, but there were signs she wasn’t being totally honest. She dressed like them, lived like them, and had willingly agreed to the blue tattoo on her face. And she’d claimed that the “savages” had not made her “unchaste”—but her name among the Mohave was “Spantsa,” a name meaning “sore vagina.”^[7]

Nobody knew the truth about Olive Oatman’s experience except for her. But some believe that living among the Mohave may have changed her more than she was willing to admit.

4 The Boyd Children

The five Boyd children managed to get away from their captors. After years living with Iroquois and Delaware families, their father brought them back home. Instead of being grateful, though, they bolted into the night. They fled their father’s home to get back to the people who had kidnapped them.

The children had been taken by Iroquois raiders and dragged out so they could be sold to other tribes. On their painful road into captivity, they were forced to watch as the warriors beat their pregnant mother to death for failing to keep up the pace. Her dead body was left behind.

It took four years before their father, John Boyd, was able to rescue any of them. The first one he saved was his eldest son, David. The boy wasn’t as happy to see his father again as John had hoped. David protested and said he didn’t want to leave his Delaware family and, after a short time, snuck out in the night, left his father’s farm, and went back to the tribe.^[8]

Over the next four years, his father went from tribe to tribe, buying his children’s freedom and bringing them back home—and saw nearly every single one sneak out into the night and leave him to go back to their captors. He freed every single one of his children, but he wasn’t able to keep them all at home.

3 Mary Campbell

Mary Campbell is just one name among hundreds of children who were kidnapped during Pontiac’s War. She, and the other children like her, were stolen away from their parents’ homes and sent to live with native tribes as revenge for the deaths of their own people, meant to replace the children the native tribes had lost.

When the war ended, Colonel Henry Bouquet demanded the children be released. He drew up a list of over 200 names of children who had been abducted from their homes, handed it to Pontiac’s warriors, and made them promise to return every one if they ever wanted to see peace in their lives again.

The tribes agreed, and the 200-plus children were sent back to their families. Mary Campbell, though, had to be dragged back to her family by force. She didn’t want to go home—and even once they brought her back, she still tried to escape and run back to the Lenape family that had captured her.

It’s a strange story, but Campbell wasn’t the only one who tried to run from her parents. Of the children Col. Bouquet freed, nearly half tried to escape their biological families, preferring to live with the families that had kidnapped them rather than the ones that had brought them into the world.^[9]

2 Theodore Babb

Theodor Babb, 14 years old, was determined to hate his Comanche captors. They had murdered his mother and dragged him and his ten-year-old sister Bianca into captivity. They could kill him if they wanted, Theodor decided, but he would not live among them.

After days of being beaten for his stubbornness, Theodor tried to escape from his captors, but he didn’t get far. The Comanche dragged him back and beat him brutally. Theodore, though, wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of crying. He wouldn’t even flinch, no matter how hard they hit him.

Frustrated, the Comanche tied him to a tree and started placing grass and branches at his feet, ready to burn him alive. Bianca wailed and cried for her brother’s life, but Theodor still wouldn’t flinch. Throughout it all, he stared the men who were getting ready to kill him in the eyes, daring them to go through with it.^[10]

They didn’t. The Comanche realized this young boy was unusually brave and, instead of killing him, trained him to be a warrior. They armed him, taught him to ride like a Comanche warrior, and showed him how to run raids.

For all he’d resisted it, as a Comanche warrior, Theodore started tapping into a part of himself he’d never been able to touch before. Within six months, he was so much a part of the tribe that when his father tried to buy him back, the Comanche chief was convinced he would refuse to leave.

In the end, Theodore did go home—but he had changed. After just six short months of captivity, he was already a Comanche warrior who had joined in on multiple raids on white men’s farms.

1 Adolph Korn

After Adolph Korn was freed from his Comanche captors, his parents moved him far away from the tribe that had harassed them. Unlike the other children on this list, he had no way to get back to the people who had kidnapped him, so, rather than live with his own parents, he fled into the wilderness and spent his life alone in a cave.

Korn had been captured when was ten years old and sold to a childless Comanche woman. She took him in as his own, and although he was initially distraught over losing his family, he soon started to enjoy it. Living in a frontier home, he’d struggled to get any attention from his eternally busy parents. Now, though, he had an adoptive mother who focused every second of her energy on him. He felt more loved that he had ever felt before.

His parents managed to get him home three years later, but he never stopped being a Comanche. He would raid his neighbors’ farms and steal their cattle. Soon, he’d built up a long police record, and terrified they’d lose their boy to a different type of captivity, his parents moved far away to a remote ranch.

Korn, though, refused to become a white man. Instead, he left his parents’ home and moved into a cave, where he lived in solitude until the day he died. As a family member said, for the rest of his life, “Adolph kept a solitary vigil for the Comanche brothers whom he knew would never return.”^[11]

The recent release of Brittney Griner from a Russian penal colony on the morning of December 8, 2022, was hailed by some and criticized by others. The same day, Sarah Krivanek, a U.S. citizen ordered deported by a Russian court due to a domestic dispute, left Russia too. Unlike Griner, though, Krivanek was not a part of a prisoner swap that saw Griner exchanged for Viktor Bout, on whom the 2005 Nicholas Cage film Lord of War is based. Many people are also aware of a third prisoner, Paul Whelan, a former Marine and corporate executive who was convicted of espionage and, as a result, is serving a 16-year sentence.

What many people don’t know is that these three people are a small group of the many other people currently detained in non-U.S. prisons. This article lists just 10 of these individuals, but there are many more.

10 Airan Barry and Luke Denman (Venezuela)

In August 2020, a Venezuelan court sentenced Airan Berry and Luke Denman, two former U.S. Army Special Forces members, to 20 years in prison after the two men attempted to help overthrow President Maduro. The two men were convicted of conspiracy charges, illegal arms trafficking, and terrorism. Both men admitted to participating in Operation Gideon, an unsuccessful attempt to remove Maduro from office. It was part of a plan organized by Silvercorp USA, a private security firm based in Florida. Operation Gideon led to the death of at least eight soldiers and the jailing of another 66 individuals.

Both Berry and Denman were arrested in the fishing village of Chuao. The two men were represented by a public defender after the lawyers hired to represent them were not told about their hearing. The two men were then used by the Venezuelan media to suggest that the United States wanted to overthrow Venezuela’s government. The United States denied any participation in the alleged coup.^[1]

9 Majd Kamalmaz (Syria)

In 2017, Majd Kamalmaz disappeared on a trip to Syria and is believed to have been placed in a Syrian jail. The 63-year-old with diabetes, who is also an American citizen and psychotherapist, arrived in Damascus on February 15, 2017. From this point, Kamalmaz traveled to Syria’s capital after the death of his father-in-law to inquire about elderly relatives. Kamalmaz is believed to have been arrested at a checkpoint on February 16, 2017. Family members have expressed wonderment over why the man was arrested because he is not involved in politics. The family has also worked with the State Department to try to find Kamalmaz and help get him released from prison.

A Czech ambassador later confirmed that Kamalmaz was held because he was seen as a symbol of U.S. interest in Syria after civil war erupted in the country. While the trail has gone cold about Kamalmaz, he is still believed to be alive. Kamalmaz is a humanitarian interested in international disaster relief and worked in Kosovo as well as Indonesia after the tsunami in 2004. In 2012, Kamalmaz became concerned about the growing conflict in Syria and helped various refugees by opening two mental health clinics in Lebanon and Jordan.^[2]

8 David Lin (China)

David Lin is a pastor who has been detained in China since 2006. U.S. efforts to have Lin released finally achieved results in 2022 following a meeting between President Joe Biden and Xi Jinping in Bali. This meeting saw the reduction of Lin’s life imprisonment—lowered to 24 years. This means that Lin will be released from prison in 2030. It remains uncertain if Lin will be able to survive until this date, though. Since 2018, Lin has been in poor health.

David Lin served as an economist who advised California and Iowa state officials. Lin’s wife was a Christian, who persuaded Lin to pursue the religion. In the 1990s, Lin began taking trips to China to promote Christianity and help local churches. Lin later registered as a Christian minister in 1999. In 2006, Lin was stopped by law enforcement and placed under house arrest for having illegal religious propaganda. Months later, Lin was arrested formally.

Lin was charged with “contract fraud” as well for helping Chinese nationals enter into contracts for premises designed for non-authorized church usage. A few years later, Lin received a life imprisonment sentence. Lin later stated that he viewed his imprisonment as a mission from God and a chance to promote religion to his fellow inmates. In 2018, however, Lin sent his loved ones in the United States his bible, his prized possession. Lin later urged his loved ones to request his release because he was in bad health and not receiving adequate care while in jail.^[3]

7 Kai Li (China)

Kai Li, an American citizen, was detained in China in 2017 following an espionage conviction. In the summer of 2016, Li transported his son from their home in New York to Harvard University before traveling to Shanghai. Kai Li, who was born in Shanghai, returned to the city for a ceremony commemorating his mother’s death. When the plane landed, Li was met by security agents. In 2018, Li was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for espionage. The Li family argues that these charges are politically motivated. The case involves state secrets that Li and his lawyer claim are freely available online.

Born in 1962, Li later moved to America to study and then became a U.S. citizen. Li opened two gas stations on Long Island and also acted as a buyer and distributor of solar cell technology for U.S. aerospace firms. During these years, Li visited China several times a year.^[4]

6 Paul Overby (Afghanistan)

Paul E. Overby Jr. is a 79-year-old writer from Massachusetts who was abducted in May 2014 in the eastern Khost province of Afghanistan. At the time he was kidnapping, Overby was headed to interview the head of the Haqqani network, an infamous Taliban network. Before disappearing, Overby suggested that he planned to cross into Pakistan.

Overby was in the country at the time to write a book about the war in Afghanistan. Additionally, Overby is reported to have had health issues that require medical care. In the 1980s, Overby fought beside Afghans against Soviet forces. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has offered a $1 million award for information leading to the return of Overby.^[5]

5 Mark Swidan (China)

In 2012, Mark Swidan was arrested and imprisoned in a Chinese detention center. Swidan was accused of being part of a drug conspiracy while in China for business; he was sentenced to death. Swidan’s mother says he was wrongfully convicted, and she fears she may never see her son again. She has not spoken to him since 2018.

The United Nations Human Rights Council and other human rights organizations have requested Swidan’s release. Despite these requests, Swidan remains in prison. While in prison, Swidan is reported to have little food and to be experiencing deteriorating health; he has reportedly lost about 100 pounds (45 kilograms). Swidan’s mother is heading efforts to get him released and has even started a GoFundMe campaign, so Swidan has money to buy necessaries at the commissary.^[6]

4 Austin Tice (Syria)

Journalist Austin Tice is a 41-year-old man who went missing in Syria in 2012. The last that anyone in the United States heard from Tice was a video released the same year. Tice disappeared in Syria in 2012, at which time he was covering the Syrian civil war. In 2018, Tice’s parents commented that they have new details that lead them to believe Tice is still alive.

In addition to being a journalist who contributed to The Washington Post, McClatchy, and CBS, Tice is also a Marine veteran and an Eagle Scout. Those who have sought details about Tice in recent years have not found any information. President Joe Biden has referred to Tice as a “journalist who put the truth above himself.” Tice’s parents continue to push the administration to secure TIce’s release.^[7]

3 Marc Fogel (Russia)

Marc Fogel is a 61-year-old U.S. citizen and teacher who was arrested after he entered Russia at the Sheremetyevo Airport in 2021 while in possession of medical marijuana. Fogel was carrying less than 20 grams of cannabis at the time of his arrest. The drug was prescribed to Fogel in Pennsylvania for medical purposes.

Fogel has taught history at various high schools in countries like Venezuela, Oman, Colombia, and Malaysia. At the time of his arrest, Fogel was working at the Anglo-American School, which is located in Moscow. The school is an elite private school tasked with teaching the children of international political figures and American diplomats. Fogel also has a history of chronic pain in his spine and was correspondingly prescribed marijuana by his medical doctor.

Fogel was subsequently sentenced to a 14-year prison sentence in a Russian penal colony on the charge of large-scale drug trafficking. Fogel’s sentence was later reduced to nine years. Fogel is reportedly not receiving adequate medical attention while in prison.^[8]

2 Emad Shargi (Iran)

Emad Shargi is an Iranian-American businessman who was arrested in Iran in 2020. Shargi has since been sentenced to a decade of imprisonment as a result of a trial that Shargi did not even attend. Shargi was arrested on espionage charges, which Iran often brings against dual-citizenship holders and foreign nationals. Shargi was first detained in 2018, though. Later released on bail, Shargi was still not allowed to leave the country. He was re-arrested in 2020.

Shargi’s family has expressed worries about his mental state and begged the United States to secure his release. During his time in the infamous Evin prison, Shargi has been allowed to make brief phone calls to his family.^[9]

1 Shahab Dalili (Iran)

Shahab Dalili is a 59-year-old man who was arrested and later imprisoned while in Tehran in 2016 for his father’s funeral. Dalili’s family had recently immigrated to the United States and chose to settle in Virginia at the time Dalili was arrested. Dalili is a legal United States resident with a green card but not a citizen. Dalili has been charged with “aiding and abetting” the United States. For several years following his imprisonment, Dalili’s wife chose not to speak about his arrest out of fear that it might jeopardize his release.

Under the Levinson Act, which was passed in 2020, the United States government must work with both U.S. citizens as well as green card holders who are viewed as “United States nationals.” As a result of this law, the United States has more power to get someone like Dalili out of prison. Further helping matters are two of Dalili’s former cellmates who were released in 2019 and have requested that President Biden not agree to any deal with Iran without securing Dalili’s freedom. One of these men was a United States citizen who was arrested while performing research in Iran as a graduate student at Princeton University.^[10]