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U.S. may join lawsuit filed against Saddam
U.S. District Judge Thomas M. Hardiman was asked by the Justice Department last week to delay until Aug. 20 any decision he makes on claims by Abdullah K. Alkhuzai, 33, against Iraq.
On June 21, Hardiman awarded Alkhuzai $88 million in damages against former dictator Saddam Hussein, the estates of his two dead sons and eight henchmen as individuals. Hardiman had issued a default judgment in May when no one responded on behalf of the defendants.
At the time, Hardiman told Alkhuzai's attorney, Regis McClelland, that he wouldn't make an immediate decision regarding the liability of the Republic of Iraq.
The court was notified of the government's "potential participation" through a notice filed by Assistant Attorney General Peter D. Keisler, U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan and others in the Justice Department.
"In light of the significant foreign policy interests of the United States related to the evolving situation in Iraq, and the legal consequences of various actions of the President and the Congress taken in furtherance of those interests, the United States is currently considering its participation in this litigation ... ," the notice said.
At issue is the centuries-old law of sovereign immunity holding that the king cannot be sued.
However, since 1996, terrorism has been found to be an exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Law.
McClelland said victims of terror have received more than $1 billion in cases against Cuba, Iran, Libya and Iraq.
In July 2003, 17 former American prisoners of war from Operation Desert Storm received a judgment of $1 billion in Washington against the Republic of Iraq, Saddam and the Iraqi Intelligence Service for what a judge called the "savagery" they suffered.
However, the Justice Department entered the case and successfully argued the judgment should be blocked so the funds could be used to rebuild Iraq.
McClelland has acknowledged it will be difficult to obtain Iraq's frozen assets, but he believes he has a good chance of collecting from the personal assets of the other defendants. He has turned the collection over to a New York firm that specializes in such judgments. Alkhuzai, an alien who has been a permanent U.S. resident since September 1994, claimed he was shocked, starved, tortured, stabbed and beaten at Baghdad 's Abu Ghraib prison before he escaped and fled to Saudi Arabia.
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