Brother of slain US hostage: Swap with Taliban raised IS demands

Eric Mueller says his sister’s situation worsened after trade of five Guantanamo Bay prisoners for a captive US soldier

PRESCOTT, Arizona — The brother of an American woman who was killed after spending months as a hostage of Islamic State militants says Kayla Mueller’s situation worsened after the government traded five Taliban commanders for a captive U.S. soldier.

The militants increased their demands after the May swap for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, Eric Mueller told NBC’s “Today” in an interview that aired Monday.

“That made the whole situation worse because that’s when the demands got greater,” he said. “They got larger. They realized that they had something.”

Mueller’s death was confirmed Feb. 10 by her family and U.S. officials. The Islamic State group claimed she died in a Jordanian airstrike, but U.S. officials have not confirmed that. The Pentagon said it didn’t know how she was killed.

Eric Mueller talks about his sister, Kayla Mueller, during a candlelight memorial in Prescott, Ariz., Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2015. (Photo credit: AP/The Arizona Republic, Michael Chow)

The 26-year-old international aid worker, who grew up in Prescott, Arizona, was captured in August 2013 after leaving a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Aleppo, Syria.

The young woman’s father, Carl Mueller, said that the United States’ willingness to swap for Bergdahl but not pay ransom or allow ransom to be paid for his daughter “was pretty hard to take.”

“I actually asked the president that question when we were in the White House,” Carl Mueller told NBC without elaborating.

Some U.S. lawmakers were outraged by the exchange of five Taliban commanders held at the Guantanamo Bay prison for Bergdahl, an Idaho native who left his post in Afghanistan and was captured and held by the Taliban for five years.

President Barack Obama’s administration has defended the swap. The Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously supported the exchange, insisting that the United States has a sacred commitment to men and women who serve that it will never leave anyone behind on the battlefield.