Bill Richardson, a former US diplomat who specialized in the release of detainees and a former ambassador to the United Nations, died on Saturday at the age of 75, his foundation’s vice president Mickey Bergman said in a statement quoted by AFP.

Bill Richardson, who was also governor of New Mexico and secretary of energy during Bill Clinton’s presidency, “died in his sleep at night,” Bergman said.

“The world has lost a defender of those who were unjustly imprisoned abroad,” he added.

Specializing in negotiating the release of Americans held by countries the United States considers “hostile,” the former ambassador helped secure the release of basketball player Brittney Griner in 2022 while she was being held in Russian custody.

A major role in the negotiations with Saddam Hussein

He was also instrumental in negotiating with Saddam Hussein for the release in 1995 of two Americans who had crossed the border.

Born in California in 1947, Bill Richardson grew up in Mexico before moving to the United States as a teenager in the (northeast) suburbs of Boston. He is one of the first members of the Latino community to achieve high political office and announced himself as the Democratic Party’s candidate in the 2008 presidential election, again becoming the first Latino minority candidate.

He eventually resigned to support Barack Obama and was slated to join the administration after his election, but a campaign finance scandal forced him out as commerce secretary.

A congressman, ambassador to the United Nations, and then secretary of energy under Bill Clinton in the late 1990s, Bill Richardson earned a reputation as an adventurer, dubbed the “Indiana Jones of American diplomacy” for his unofficial missions to countries that were enemies of the United States. .

Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Fidel Castro in Cuba, Kim Jong Il in North Korea, Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela – for almost 30 years, the energetic emissary had numerous private mediation missions with Washington’s greatest enemies. (Source: Agerpres)