Former POWS to sue US govt
28/07/2003 17:31  - (SA)  

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Washington - Seventeen former POWs who won a $1bn reparations lawsuit for mistreatment in captivity during the 1991 Gulf War are now suing the US government to get the settlement paid from frozen Iraqi assets, the Washington Times reported on Monday.

President George W Bush's administration had wanted to use the money, totalling about $1.7bn, to pay for Iraq's reconstruction.

In early July a federal judge awarded the former prisoners of war a total of $653m plus $306m in damages, agreeing that they had been brutally treated and tortured by their Iraqi captors.

Lawyers for the POWs also obtained a ten-day restraining order preventing the US government from allocating any of the seized assets, held in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, for postwar reconstruction currently under way in Iraq.

The Justice Department responded by asking the judge to throw out the $1bn settlement, because the original lawsuit was against Saddam Hussein and he is no longer in power in Iraq.

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