Lawyer Outlines POWs' Claims Against Iraq
March 18 -- A group of veterans who were held prisoner during the 1991 Gulf War have brought a lawsuit against Iraq for their mistreatment in captivity. Below is a statement by an attorney for the POWs. Several of the former POWs spoke to 20/20 about the torture they endured. Click here to read that story. http://abcnews.com/sections/2020/World/2020_gulfpows030314.html
Overview of Legal Efforts
Seventeen former American POWs, brutally tortured during the Gulf War, and thirty-seven of their family members filed suit against the Republic of Iraq, the Iraqi Intelligence Service, and Saddam Hussein on April 4, 2002. This case (Acree v. Republic of Iraq) was filed under a narrowly-drawn amendment to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act that permits civil suits against countries on the State Department's list of terrorist nations for acts of torture, hostage-taking, aircraft sabotage, or extra-judicial killing. By this 1996 amendment to the Act, Congress has added civil litigation as a tool in the war against terrorism. Moreover, Congress has specifically decreed that payment for monetary judgments should be made out of the frozen funds of the terrorist nations — a process that clearly promotes accountability and deterrence (in keeping with the primary motivations behind this lawsuit).
The case is currently pending in federal court in Washington, D.C. The court granted the Plaintiffs' request for "fast track" assignment, and the Plaintiffs hope for a speedy resolution of the case to give them closure after twelve long years and, more importantly, to help deter any future torture of POWs by sending a strong message that torture of American POWs will not be tolerated.
Types of Torture Endured and Injuries Suffered
Unquestionably, the torture inflicted upon the Gulf War POWs falls within the scope of the 1996 statute. The torture varied for each of the POW Plaintiffs, but the overall torture of American POWs by officials of the Republic of Iraq included severe beatings with pistols and rifles, weighted rubber hoses, truncheons, blackjacks, fists, belts, metal pipes, batons, and sticks. It further included mock executions; threatened castration; threatened amputation of fingers and other dismemberment; threatened death; threats to send their body parts to loved ones in the United States; systematic starvation; systematic exposure to freezing cold; deprivation of medical care; purposeful aggravation of existing injuries; electrical shock with a device wrapped around a POW's head; injection of a mind-altering substance; kicking, including with steel-toed boots; cupped hand blows to the ears; beating with a mallet on the knees; handcuffs and restraints so tight as to cut off circulation, damage nerves, and cause the hands to swell and turn purple; shocking with cattle prods and stun guns; beating captives into unconsciousness, sometimes repeatedly; blows to the legs and necks with a heavy pendulum-like object; whipping with a cat-o'-nine-tails; confinement in darkness; confinement in filthy conditions exposing them to contagion and infection; burning with cigarettes and heated spoons; leading blindfolded captives into walls and stairwells; urinating and spitting upon them; causing mental torment about the agony that the captives' families must be enduring, compounded by the refusal of Iraqi authorities to allow outside access to the POWs or inform their families that they were alive; creating an environment of constant fear of death and torture, a climate intended to humiliate and degrade; and other atrocities causing great suffering and serious injury.
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