News-Info-Alerts

Re: Compensation for Saddam's Captives

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: April 18, 2003

"Millions to U.S. victims of former Iraqi regime; other compensation claims pending

By Sharon Cohen, Associated Press

Stuart Williams is watching the end of the war with Iraq as one of a special group of Americans: He was a victim of Saddam Hussein's brutal regime more than a decade ago, and now he's finally being paid for his nightmare.

Williams was among hundreds of Americans and others terrorized and held captive as ''human shields'' in oil refineries and squalid factories to prevent allied air attacks after Saddam's regime invaded Kuwait in 1990.

Nearly 13 years later, they're witnessing Saddam statues being dragged through the dusty streets even as they're collecting millions in frozen Iraqi government assets for their abuse at the hands of the deposed regime.

''The money is inconsequential. The moral victory is watching tanks in the heart of Baghdad,'' says Williams, a former banker who lost 35 pounds and suffered post-traumatic stress from his four-month ordeal.

''This is a damage that's with you for life. No one ever gets over it,'' he says. Still, he feels no satisfaction in the suffering he's seeing. ''I'm happy the Iraqi people have been liberated,'' he says.

Williams was among 179 hostages and their spouses who recently collected the bulk of some $118 million in confiscated Iraqi funds judgments from lawsuits the Americans won following the 1991 Gulf War.

Payments ranged from $40,000 to $1.75 million, according to Dan Wolf, a lawyer for the group, which included teachers, bankers, engineers and construction workers in Kuwait and Iraq when they were rounded up in 1990 and moved to strategic locations.

Most were subjected to terrifying experiences, including mock executions, beatings or, in some cases, sexual abuse.

Many also became ill from being held in rat- and snake-infested hovels, eating rancid food and drinking dirty water. One man, a severe diabetic who had no access to insulin, lost sight in one eye.

The compensation they are receiving comes from about $1.7 billion in frozen Iraqi assets that President Bush confiscated last month, most of which will go to rebuild postwar Iraq.

The president's move cleared the way for the payment of those who had already received judgments against the Iraqi government and hadn't yet been awarded the money.

Besides the $118 million for these victims, Treasury Department spokesman Taylor Griffin says the administration plans to work with Congress on a payment plan for other legitimate claims made by U.S. citizens against Saddam's regime.

Several U.S. military POWs from the Gulf War have sued, claiming they were brutalized and starved. And Wolf, the Washington lawyer, represents about 200 other human shields held captive in 1990, including William Deaton, a hostage for three months near Basra, Iraq.

Deaton says more than money is at stake.

''They have to learn you can't simply gather people and pull them away from their families and friends ... and cause them suffering without being held accountable,'' he says.

Those who've already received checks say the money provides some measure of justice.

''There's a sense of vindication and satisfaction that my government stood shoulder to shoulder with me and said you've been wronged and we'll set it right,'' says Paul Eliopoulos, who was beaten, lost 30 pounds, saw a Kuwaiti man executed and was lined up against a wall with others expecting to be shot during 41&Mac218;2 months in captivity.

Jim Roach, who suffered from dysentery during 130 days as a human shield, also says these judgments have a ripple effect.

''All of this lets the world know we're not going to put up with it,'' says Roach, a human resources manager for Bechtel Corp., who was working in Iraq before he was held at an ammunitions factory south of Baghdad.

Roach, now 63, says he tried to make the best of a terrible situation; once when interviewed on Iraqi television and asked if had any requests, he replied: an Arabian horse.

But he was worried about his pregnant wife he didn't know if she had made it out of Iraq and feared he'd be killed.

Williams, then a bank president in Kuwait, and his wife, Charlene Coutre, endured their own horrors. They were taken to a dump in the desert where Iraqi soldiers raised a tarpaulin with machine guns pointed at them. Convinced they were going to die, they held hands and said their goodbyes.

Instead, they were moved to an oil refinery where they were held in a filthy hut, where food was so scarce they sometimes scrounged from garbage, and he was hit with rifle butts.

Williams, now 58, says he played psychological games with his captors, boasting about the powers of a B-52 bomber or an Abrams tank. ''When people threaten you daily with death, it loses its impact,'' says Williams, now retired from a second career as a paramedic.

All the human shields were released by December 1990. (They are not to be confused with Americans and others who opposed the current Iraq war and called themselves ''human shields'' as they voluntarily occupied potential targets; most left before the fighting began.)

The Americans who claimed abuse by Saddam were able to collect Iraqi money under a law passed last year that allows U.S. victims of state-sponsored terrorism to be paid judgments from frozen assets. The law covers Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Syria, North Korea, Cuba and Libya.

Though the former hostages account for most of those who received money, others who did include Sargon Dadesho, an exile targeted by Saddam's regime in a foiled assassination attempt. He received $2.4 million.

The law also allowed four men who had worked as civilian contractors to receive judgments of about $18.8 million, according to Jim Cooper-Hill, one of their lawyers.

Among them was David Daliberti, a 49-year-old aircraft mechanic working in Kuwait in 1995 when he and another American mistakenly crossed into Iraq. They were sentenced to eight years in prison for illegally entering the country.

''I had come to the resolve I was not going to stay there eight years,'' Daliberti says. ''You get to a point where even getting killed is better than staying there.'''

Daliberti and the other man were released after four months when then-U.S. Rep. Bill Richardson appealed to Saddam.

But he returned home with hepatitis C and has suffered two heart attacks.

Still, Daliberti is encouraged by the recent developments both for himself and the Iraqi people.

''What's going on now, that's pretty good satisfaction,'' he says. ''Getting a big chunk of their money, that's satisfaction, too. But a human mind isn't a VCR tape. You can't erase it.''

© Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company"