James Foley

James Wright Foley (October 18, 1973 – c. August 19, 2014) was an American journalist and video reporter. While working as a freelance war correspondent during the Syrian Civil War, he was abducted on November 22, 2012, in northwestern Syria. He was murdered by decapitation in August 2014 purportedly as a response to American airstrikes in Iraq, thus becoming the first American citizen martyred by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Before becoming a journalist, Foley was an instructor for Teach For America. By spring 2008, in Iraq, he became an embedded journalist with an Indiana National Guard unit, writing a story for In These Times, about condolence payments paid to Iraqis. In 2008, he became an embedded journalist with USAID-funded development projects in Iraq, and in 2011 he wrote for the military newspaper Stars and Stripes in Afghanistan, and GlobalPost in Libya. There, he was captured by Gaddafi loyalist forces and held for 44 days. The next year, Foley was captured in Syria while he was working for Agence France-Presse and GlobalPost.