These Are the Stories James Foley Risked His Life to Tell

James Fo­ley, a journ­al­ist who dis­ap­peared in Syr­ia nearly two years ago, has been murdered by mem­bers of the Is­lam­ic State in Ir­aq and Syr­ia.

IS­IS mem­bers pos­ted a video on­line Tues­day that they claim de­picts Fo­ley’s ex­e­cu­tion. The Na­tion­al Se­cur­ity Coun­cil re­leased a state­ment Wed­nes­day morn­ing an­noun­cing that they found the video to be au­then­t­ic.

Fo­ley’s moth­er Di­ane re­leased a state­ment Tues­day night on a Face­book page ded­ic­ated to the journ­al­ist. Here it is in full:

We have nev­er been prouder of our son Jim. He gave his life try­ing to ex­pose the world to the suf­fer­ing of the Syr­i­an people.

We im­plore the kid­nap­pers to spare the lives of the re­main­ing host­ages. Like Jim, they are in­no­cents. They have no con­trol over Amer­ic­an gov­ern­ment policy in Ir­aq, Syr­ia or any­where in the world.

We thank Jim for all the joy he gave us. He was an ex­traordin­ary son, broth­er, journ­al­ist and per­son. Please re­spect our pri­vacy in the days ahead as we mourn and cher­ish Jim.

Cap­tured in Novem­ber 2012, Fo­ley, 40, was an ac­com­plished journ­al­ist who doc­u­mented the com­plex­ity of the wars in the Middle East and Afgh­anistan and told the stor­ies of those af­fected by it—hu­man­iz­ing and ex­plain­ing sub­jects for an audi­ence far re­moved.

Here is some of the work for which Fo­ley risked—and likely lost—his life.

Ed­it­or’s note: Due to tech­nic­al dif­fi­culties, all videos be­gin play­ing im­me­di­ately upon land­ing on the page. They can be paused and watched in se­quence.

Fo­ley in­ter­views Amer­ic­an sol­diers about the fine—and of­ten frus­trat­ing—line they walked in Afgh­anistan as they faced off against en­emy com­batants while sim­ul­tan­eously try­ing to win over a ci­vil­ian pop­u­la­tion. 

He also wrote, pen­ning a piece for the Glob­al Post in which he in­ter­viewed sol­diers fight­ing a los­ing battle on be­half of former Liby­an dic­tat­or Muam­mar el-Qad­dafi. “De­fec­ted and cap­tured loy­al­ist sol­diers said there are a num­ber of factors mo­tiv­at­ing their former com­rades, in­clud­ing the hope of fin­an­cial re­ward and a fear of civil war. But the para­mount reas­on to keep fight­ing, they said, is the fear of re­pris­als,” Fo­ley re­por­ted.

Fo­ley was cap­tured in Libya in 2011 and spent sev­er­al weeks in cap­tiv­ity. He dis­cussed his ex­per­i­ence, re­call­ing the feel­ing of help­less­ness dur­ing cap­tiv­ity and the sad­ness he felt over the death of one of his col­leagues.

Fo­ley also dis­cusses the draw of war re­port­ing, both for the ad­ren­aline of the ex­per­i­ence and the de­sire to get a story that would oth­er­wise go un­told:

“It’s a struggle be­cause there is al­ways that al­lure for some people of com­bat. There is al­ways that sort of high of be­ing close to com­bat … and then be­ing able to come back and tell that story.”

This story was up­dated Wed­nes­day with state­ment from the NSC.