Connecticut Resident Held Captive in Libya Testifies Before Senate Judiciary Committee

***EDITOR’S NOTE: FOOTAGE OF BLUMENTHAL AND CT WITNESS AVAILABLE ON PATHFIRE DMG AND FTP***

Slug: [CT Resident Held Captive in Libya Testifies to Senate Judiciary Committee]

1.      On the left side of the Pathfire/DMG main page, click on Video News Feed (Master VNF Locator).

2.      From the expanded list, double-click on VNF Provider B.

3.      Click the U.S. Senate tab.

4.      Locate and click (CT1) CT, Blumenthal.  The link to the video will be displayed in the pane on the right.

5.      For more instructions, please see the attached PDF. 

FTP: http://gp1d.senate.gov/sdmc/Blumenthal/072711_BLUMENTHAL_1_FTP.M2T

Audio: http://demradio.senate.gov/actualities/blumenthal/072711_BLUMENTHAL_1_RADIO.mp3

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(Washington, DC) – Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee today heard testimony from Clare Gillis, a freelance reporter and Connecticut native captured by Ghadafi loyalists in Libya and held for 44 days, about the importance of providing American citizens with critical support and protection when detained abroad.

The hearing discussed the Consular Notification Compliance Act of 2011, which would bring the United States into compliance with its international obligations under the Vienna Convention on Consular Notification, ensuring that when American citizens are detained abroad, other nations continue to notify the United States, allow our diplomats access to those citizens to determine their condition, and provide a mechanism for negotiating for their release. 

At the hearing, Senator Blumenthal noted that these protections will be vitally important to servicemembers and to journalists like Clare Gillis.

Blumenthal said, “Particularly for journalists, twenty of whom have been detained in Libya, four of them killed, this situation [being detained] arises even more frequently.”

“Without consular access I do not know when we would have been released, or who would have negotiated the delicate process of actually getting us to that border,” said Gillis at the hearing. “If the United States  continues to ignore its obligations under the Vienna convention on consular relations, that makes it easier for foreign governments to ignore their obligations to imprisoned American citizens abroad.”

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