Money, Money

Do US prisoners of war and others who feel that Iraq abused them deserve a chunk of the riches that Saddam Hussein8217;s regime has left be...

Do US prisoners of war and others who feel that Iraq abused them deserve a chunk of the riches that Saddam Hussein8217;s regime has left behind? Lawyers for American soldiers and civilians held captive by Iraq during the 1991 Persian Gulf War answer with an emphatic yes. They want to dig into a 1.7 billion pot of seized Iraqi assets to satisfy legal judgments against the Iraqi regime. Others who were captured in the war that is now winding down may want to follow in their footsteps.

But the Bush administration wants to use most of the Iraqi assets to pay for reconstruction of the country, and has already started spending the funds 8212; using some, for example, to make cash payments to Iraqi civil servants to ensure they return to work.

So far, only 118 million of the 1.7 billion has been used to pay legal claims awarded by US courts before Bush ordered the Iraqi assets seized when the war began last month. That won8217;t begin to pay the billions of dollars of claims pending from 1991 war, nor future claims from recently liberated POWs or on behalf of other US victims of Iraqi terrorist actions.

The dispute highlights a broader issue: How best to deal with the abuse of Americans during wartime? The lawyers 8212; with potentially big fees at stake 8212; argue that one effective deterrent is literally to make the violators pay. 8216;8216;Why should we give a free ride to nations torturing and killing Americans?8217;8217; asks John Norton Moore, who is working for the 1991 POWs.

The State Department, however, sees frozen assets as diplomatic negotiating tools. 8216;8216;We do not believe that it is in the overall US national interest to use blocked assets for compensation of judgment holders,8217;8217; a department spokesperson says. And a US government analyst adds that the special legislation authorising such lawsuits is bad public policy.

8216;8216;Families of victims of less-visible tragedies ask, and no doubt will continue to ask this government, why their loved ones8217; lives were worth less,8217;8217; the official says.

In 1996, Congress opened a major breach in the doctrine of Sovereign Immunity, which protects nations from foreign suits, by passing legislation allowing individuals to sue nations on the US terrorism list for torture and other acts. The list includes Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.

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Using the 1996 law, 17 prisoners of war and 37 family members filed a claim totaling 900 million against Iraq in April 2002 in federal court here, saying the prisoners were tortured in 1991 by their Iraqi captors. Among other accounts, the 162-page complaint details the treatment of Maj Robert Sweet, whose fighter aircraft was shot down on February 15, 1991, by an Iraqi surface-to-air missile. He dropped to earth in the midst of the Medina Republican Guard division. Maj Sweet was beaten, causing a burst eardrum and isolated in a dark, tiny cell with a broken toilet.

Another lawsuit from the first Gulf War involves between 180 and 200 plaintiffs who were held as 8216;8216;human shields8217;8217; by Saddam for four months, in August 1990, when Saddam attacked Kuwait. Daniel Wolf, a lawyer who represents the group, said they received about 47 million, about half what a court awarded them, after the Federal Reserve Bank of New York was ordered to turn over funds from an Iraqi government account. An additional 48 million was paid from the 1.7 billion in frozen Iraqi assets that Bush ordered seized last month.