NATIONAL POLITICS:
American Ex-POWs Fight Own Government to Collect Iraq Torture Settlement
BY MILES BENSON
c.2003 Newhouse News Service
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is quietly piling up victories in a legal battle to block payments to 17 U.S. combat veterans who were captured and tortured in the first Gulf War and won a suit against Iraq for nearly a billion dollars.
The former POWs -- whipped, beaten, burned, electrically shocked and starved by their Iraqi captors in 1991 -- say they are baffled by the administration's refusal to let them collect any of the assets of Iraq now under U.S. control, and by the Justice Department's efforts to overturn a federal court decision upholding their claims to compensation.
"I don't understand why they want to see this case go away," said Lt. Col. Dave Storr of Spokane, Wash., who today is an airline pilot and serves in the Air National Guard.
"My country can be mistaken," Storr said, "but I'll still serve it and love it. I'm proud to wear the uniform, no matter what comes."
He has proven that. Parachuting through a fireball after his Air Force plane was hit by ground fire on Feb. 2, 1991, then-Capt. Storr was captured by the Iraqis and beaten, kicked in the head and urinated on. During interrogation sessions, guards shocked him with an electrical device, beat him with clubs, broke his nose, dislocated his shoulder and burst his left eardrum. He was held 33 days.
The government that heaped praise and medals on the ex-POWs has drawn a line at extracting a financial price from Iraq for their ordeal.
White House spokesman Trent Duffy referred all questions about the dispute to the Justice Department, where officials would not comment because the matter is still in litigation.
In court filings, the government asserts sweeping presidential power to block the claims because of the "weighty foreign policy interests at stake."
It does not dispute details of the POWs' suffering.
"The United States government fully recognizes the brutal actions to which the plaintiffs here were subjected as they heroically served their country and made sacrifices during the Gulf War in 1991," the Justice Department acknowledges. "Plaintiffs' suffering at the hands of the former Iraqi government officials cannot be excused or forgotten.
"Nevertheless, the political branches of our government have decided that, now that the oppressive regime of Saddam Hussein has been removed from power, U.S. sanctions against Iraq based on its support of terrorism must be removed."
The former POWs launched their lawsuit in April 2002 under a 1996 law that allows terrorist nations, so designated by the State Department, to be sued for personal injuries to U.S. nationals, including prisoners of war. They argued that they were tortured in violation of the Geneva Conventions' ban on mistreatment of POWs.
Their position was strengthened last November when Congress passed and Bush signed into law a terrorism insurance bill allowing Americans to collect court-ordered compensatory damages from frozen assets of terrorist states.
The ex-POWs have trouble reconciling the administration's latest actions with their own fight.
Army Sgt. David Lockett of Birmingham, Ala., currently on duty in Mannheim, Germany, said he understands the government "wants to help the people of Iraq, but our case didn't have anything to do with that."
Lockett was taken prisoner when his truck convoy wandered into Iraqi army emplacements. He was shot in the abdomen, a wound his captors made the target of blows from fists and rifle butts during his captivity. He was held 33 days.
Marine Corps pilot Maj. Joe Small of Racine, Wis., was shot down by an Iraqi missile on Feb. 25, 1991, and taken to an underground bunker, whipped with a strap and subjected to frequent subsequent beatings as he was moved to Basra and then to Baghdad. Small, who has left the service, is now an airline pilot. Of his government, he said, "I guess they place a higher priority on giving pensions to garbage collectors in Iraq than they do to rights bestowed by Congress on POWs."
Air Force Capt. Harry Michael Roberts was shot down by a surface-to-air missile on Jan. 19, 1991. He ejected just south of Baghdad and was captured on landing. During a night-long interrogation, his captors beat him with fists and a club, cut his head with repeated blows from rifle butts, and shocked him with an electric prod. Subsequent battering sessions followed the same pattern, with blows to his right leg with a baton, kicks and electrical shocks to force him to make a videotape denouncing the war effort and praising Iraq.
"You're a long way from Geneva now," one interrogator whispered to him during his six-week captivity.
Roberts, now a lieutenant colonel in the Ohio Air National Guard on active duty at Wright Patterson Air Force base, said he is less interested in the money than in "holding Iraq accountable for what they did to our prisoners of war, because it's the best way to prevent that from happening again in the future." A portion of any money collected, he said, will go to a foundation that will be set up to assist the families of POWs.
The torture of Marine Lt. Col. Craig Berryman began almost immediately after his capture on Jan. 28, 1991, when the Harrier aircraft he piloted was shot down near Kuwait City. His captors punched, kicked and spat on him. He was later transported to Basra in Iraq, where his left leg was broken with blows from a club. Flesh was kicked out of the leg, exposing bone. A lit cigarette was pressed against his forehead, nose and ears, then crushed out in an open wound on his neck. Berryman finally was moved to Baghdad, where beatings continued with rubber hoses, clubs and pistol barrels. He was held captive 37 days.
Berryman said he believes that Bush, himself a former National Guardsman, must be unaware of the Justice Department's effort to extinguish the lawsuit. "But it certainly makes you wonder," he said. "I'm sure he'd do the right thing if he knew. He's really a nice guy but he's got a lot on his mind right now."
Berryman, stationed at Cherry Point, N.C., is scheduled for redeployment to the Middle East on Oct. 26.
U.S. District Judge Richard Roberts ordered Iraq on July 7 -- three months after the fall of Saddam's regime -- to pay the 17 ex-POWs and their families $653 million in compensatory damages and $306 million in punitive damages for torturing the men. Roberts ordered a temporary freeze on $653 million in Iraqi assets then held in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, as a source of funds for the settlement.
At that point the Justice Department stepped in, asking the judge to throw out the judgment against Iraq.
The government's attorneys quoted Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, the presidential envoy to Iraq: "Restricting these funds as a result of this litigation would affect adversely the ability of the United States to achieve security and stability in the region, would compromise the safety of U.S. forces and Iraqi civilians, and would be harmful to U.S. national security interests."
On July 30, Judge Roberts ruled that Bush had the power to prevent the frozen Iraqi funds from being awarded to the ex-POWs. But Roberts refused to overturn his original finding that the men are entitled to compensation from Iraq. He said the Justice Department's motion to have the entire compensation judgment thrown out was "meritless."
Lawyers for the ex-POWs appealed the judge's decision upholding the president's power to deny access to the frozen Iraqi assets, but the administration position was affirmed. Now the Justice Department is appealing Roberts' original decision that the former POWs are entitled to compensation.
Navy Lt. Jeffrey Zaun of Jersey City, N.J., was navigator aboard an A-6 Intruder on Jan. 17, 1991, when it was downed by an Iraqi missile. He was captured, and when he refused to provide information to interrogators about his mission and the location of U.S. forces, he was repeatedly karate-chopped in the throat. Kept for weeks in a darkened cell, he was beaten and twice subjected to mock executions. He was held 46 days.
Zaun, today a financial analyst for Standard & Poors and a commander in the Naval Reserve, said he isn't surprised that the Bush administration opposes the ex-POWs' bid for compensation, given what he termed the administration's aversion to tort claims. But they should get over it, he said.
"I didn't want to deploy, either, but when they said to go I went," Zaun said. "Sometimes it's necessary to get in these people's faces and take their money. It's a great way to hurt the folks who financed bad guys."
"It does surprise me a little bit that Bush is not helping," said Jeff Fox, of Surfside Beach, S.C., who was held 15 days after his A-10 was shot down over southern Iraq on Feb. 19, 1991. "It sends a very bad message that a commander in chief would place veterans and prisoners of war second behind a foreign nation. Deep down, I think he (Bush) knows very little about it."
Fox recalled his nightmare: "The torture began six hours after I was captured." Repeatedly beaten while handcuffed and blindfolded, the Air Force lieutenant colonel was kicked and struck with a rubber mallet or baton. He was told he would be shot, and a pistol was cocked behind his head. His tormentor pulled the trigger, discharging the weapon near Fox's right ear, exploding the ear drum.
On Oct. 14, the U.S. Senate passed a non-binding "sense of Congress" amendment urging the administration to drop all resistance to the claims of the ex-POWs and help them collect the damage awards from assets of the Saddam regime still controlled by the United States. The amendment, sponsored by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., was added to the bill providing $87 billion for U.S. military action and rebuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"The pain and terror American POWs endured at the hands of the Iraqi government is unspeakable," Reid said. "We must send a message to would-be tormentors of other governments that if they torture American POWs, they will be held accountable."
Oct. 23, 2003
(Miles Benson can be contacted at [email protected])
