A federal appeals court today took back the $959 million awarded to U.S. prisoners of war tortured by Saddam Hussein's goons during the 1991 Gulf War.
Claiming that Congress never authorized such lawsuits against foreign governments, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit dumped a lower court's ruling that said 17 former POWs and 37 relatives were due damages under a federal statute allowing suits against terrorist nations.
The judges insisted that the law allowed lawsuits for
pain and suffering only if filed against torturers not acting
on behalf of their government.
Even though the lawsuit names Saddam Hussein, he is
immune because the POWs sued him for atrocities he perpetrated as
Iraq's president, the judges said.
"We are mindful of the gravity of [the POWs'] allegations in
this case. That appellees endured this suffering while acting in
service to their country is all the more sobering," Judge Harry
Edwards opined. "Nevertheless, we cannot ignore ... its impact on the United States' conduct of foreign policy where the law is indisputably clear that appellees were not legally entitled."
The POWs suffered severe beatings, starvation, electric
shock, threats of amputation and dismemberment and continual death threats. Among the atrocities revealed in their 125-page complaint:
Marine Maj. Michael Craig Berryman was beaten with a pipe and an ax handle.
Marine Col. Clifford Acree was so near starvation he could
"feel his body consuming itself."
Navy Cmdr. Lawrence Slade's body was so blue from bruises that it was "as if he had been dipped in indigo dye."
Retired Air Force Col. David Eberly told the Associated Press: "This is difficult to take. We served without question and withstood the worst the Iraqi torturers handed out. ... I am also concerned for those who serve our country in the future, as future torturers may now believe that the United States will not stand behind its servicemen and women."
Government lawyers had claimed that legal judgments against
foreign regimes would hamper diplomacy and that the POWs shouldn't get the money because President Bush decided the statute didn't apply to Iraq since Baghdad no longer supported terrorism after American troops toppled Saddam.
The Bush administration does, however, continue to talk of giving U.S. taxpayers' dollars to Iraqi terrorist suspects who underwent far milder indiginities such as as being posed nude and deprived of sleep.
Plaintiffs' attorney Tony Onorato pointed out that 13
of the 17 American POWs had been imprisoned at Abu Ghraib.
"It adds to the parallels," Onorato said. "Our very guys who
were tortured in that very prison are being told to get out of the
way."
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