Connecticut Resident Held Captive in Libya Testifies Before Senate Judiciary Committee

Press Release

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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