|
Sen. Hillary Clinton: Terror Victims Should Get Compensated From Frozen Assets
 |
| Hillary
Clinton wants victim compensation to come from U.S.-frozen
assets
|
WASHINGTON,
April 18 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - U.S. victims of terrorist
attacks should receive court-awarded compensation from Treasury-held
frozen or blocked assets of the foreign governments who allegedly
sponsored the attacks, lawmakers said Tuesday, April 15.
"This
legislation is an important step in the war on terrorism," said
Senator Hillary Clinton, one of the five congressional sponsors of the
measure introducing bipartisan legislation to that effect.
"By
helping to ensure that state sponsors pay a heavy financial price,
this legislation adds another weapon to the U.S. arsenal in its fight
against global terrorism," she said.
The
Terrorism Victim's Access to Compensation Act of 2002 would allow
those Americans who have successfully sued in civil lawsuits, to
collect court-awarded compensation from the roughly $3.7 billion the
U.S. Treasury holds in blocked or frozen assets of the seven
U.S.-designated so-called “state sponsors of terrorism.”
The
law would therefore apply to Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Sudan, North
Korea and Cuba, as well as the agents underwritten by those states,
according to Senator Tom Harkin.
Currently,
the U.S. government does not allow victims to have access to those
assets even though they have successfully sued foreign governments in
U.S. courts.
The
measure is opposed by U.S. President George W. Bush’s
administration, which contends the State Department needs to control
frozen assets of foreign countries as a diplomatic tool. In fighting
the bill, the Bush administration is adopting the same stance as the
administration of former U.S. president Bill Clinton before it,
reports the U.S. daily newspaper, New York Times.
Advocates
for victims say that a 1996 law introduced under Bill Clinton’s
administration that allows victims to bring suits in American courts
has been ineffective.
Some
victims and family members of victims called for support of the bill.
"It's
been a long time coming," said Edwena Hegna, whose husband
Charles, the United States Agency for International Development
(USAID) station chief in Pakistan, was beaten, then brutally murdered
in 1984 while traveling on Kuwait Airlines Flight 221 from Kuwait City
to Pakistan when four Iranian-backed hijackers took the flight.
Hegna
was awarded $42 million in U.S. courts but has been unable to collect
from Iran.
Harkin
dismissed any suggestion that such a bill would open the doors to
foreign governments acting in a similar fashion against U.S. assets if
their courts were to rule compensation was due.
According
to the New York Times, Iraq has over $2 billion in assets frozen;
Libya, over $1 billion; Cuba, about $90 million; and Iran, about $350
million, plus $60 million in an account for military sales that were
never completed. Other countries have minimal assets frozen in the
U.S.
|
