Opinion ID: 185696
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Hostage Taking

Text: 43 As with torture, the FSIA draws its definition of hostage taking from an exogenous legal source, here article 1 of the International Convention Against the Taking of Hostages. See 28 U.S.C. § 1605(e)(2). This provision reads as follows: 44 Any person who seizes or detains and threatens to kill, to injure or to continue to detain another person in order to compel a third party, namely, a State, an international governmental organization, a natural or judicial person or a group of persons, to do or abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the hostage commits the offense of taking hostages within the meaning of the Convention. 45 (Emphases added). Under no reasonable reading of the plaintiffs' complaint does their admittedly unpleasant imprisonment qualify as hostage taking so defined. 46 The Convention does not proscribe all detentions, but instead focuses on the intended purpose of the detention. In this case, the complaint asserts only that Libya incarcerated Price and Frey for the purpose of demonstrating Defendant's support of the government of Iran which held hostages in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran. Compl., at ¶ 7. Such motivation does not satisfy the Convention's intentionality requirement. The definition speaks in terms of conditions of release; the defendant must have detained the victim in order to compel some particular result, specifically to force a third party either to perform an act otherwise unplanned or to abstain from one otherwise contemplated so as to ensure the freedom of the detainee. Accordingly, detention for the goal of expressing support for illegal behavior — even for behavior that would itself qualify as hostage taking — does not constitute the taking of hostages within the meaning of the FSIA. 47 In this case, the plaintiffs have suggested no demand for quid pro quo terms between the government of Libya and a third party whereby Price and Frey would have been released upon the performance or non-performance of any action by that third party. Indeed, even when read most favorably to them, their complaint points to no nexus between what happened to them in Libya and any concrete concession that Libya may have hoped to extract from the outside world. The one purpose that plaintiffs have alleged is plainly inadequate, and they have advanced no others. Their allegation thus falls short of the standard for hostage taking under § 1605(a)(7). 48 For these reasons, Libya cannot be stripped of its sovereign immunity based on plaintiffs' allegation of hostage taking. The District Court thus erred in refusing to dismiss this count. Accordingly, we reverse on this point.