Supreme Court denies $1 billion penalty over Gulf War torture
- David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Washington – American pilots and soldiers who were taken
prisoner and tortured by the Iraqis during the Persian Gulf
War of 1991 have lost their legal bid to hold Iraq liable, as
the Supreme Court turned away their final appeal Monday.
The justices heeded the advice of the Bush administration
and let stand an appeals court ruling that threw out a nearly
$1 billion verdict won by the prisoners of war two years ago.
The high court’s refusal to hear the case spares the
administration from having to go before the justices to
argue against American POWs who were tortured. The 17
former POWs had sued Iraq and the government of Saddam
Hussein under the terms of a 1996 anti-terrorism law that
opened the courthouse door to claims from Americans who
had been injured or tortured at the hands of “state sponsors
of terror.”
Their story was little known, because the Persian Gulf War
was witnessed by most Americans as a TV spectacular in
which U.S. forces pounded and destroyed Iraq’s army within
weeks. But during that time, the POWs said, they were
beaten and had their bones broken by Iraqi captors. Several
of the men nearly starved in the weeks they were held in
cold, filthy cells, including at the Abu Ghraib prison near
Baghdad.
By the time the onetime POWs won their claim in federal
court in 2003, the United States had invaded Iraq and
toppled Hussein’s government. To the surprise of the former
U.S. prisoners, the Bush administration went to court
seeking to nullify the award they had won.
Read the rest of the story:
sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c … =printable