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Seventeen POWs Tortured by Iraq Having Trouble Collecting Judgment
Aired July 11, 2003 - 08:12 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Seventeen POWs who were tortured by Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War have won nearly a billion dollars in court. But they're having trouble collecting.
Retired Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Fox is one of those who sued to collect a share of frozen Iraqi assets. But President Bush has directed that the money be used instead to rebuild Iraq.
Lieutenant Colonel Fox is joining us now from Charlotte, South Carolina this morning. His lawyer, Steve Fennel, is in Washington, D.C.
Steve, let's start with you.
We're talking about new legal ground here. As we mentioned, the judge awarded the plaintiffs just under a billion dollars. So what exactly is the hold up in collecting?
STEVE FENNEL, POW'S LAWYER: The hold up in collecting, Soledad, is that Congress in late 2002 passed a law that said if we received this judgment, we could obtain payment out of frozen assets in this country. There are $1.7 billion in frozen Iraqi assets in this country. On the eve of the second Gulf War, the president took that money out of those frozen accounts and put it under the U.S. Treasury and it now sits in the Federal Reserve Bank in New York.
We're going to take the president and Congress at their word in 2002 when they passed this law, that those assets are available to us. But we don't know what the administration is going to do. We hope that President Bush, properly briefed, will do the right thing and release the funds to the POWs.
O'BRIEN: Jeff, you flew a mission over Iraqi air space on February 19, 1991, as a lieutenant colonel.
What happened on that day?
JEFF FOX, LT. COL., USAF (RETIRED): Well, I was -- the aircraft was struck by a surface to air missile and I was forced to eject. And I was captured and eventually was taken up to Baghdad.
O'BRIEN: Give me a sense, over the next 15 days, what happened. You were tortured.
FOX: Well, in the course of the next 15 days I was -- you were always handcuffed, blindfolded. I was kept in the trunk of a vehicle. You were taken out. I was beaten. Had my ear drum broken. On two occasions I was stripped naked and checked to see if was circumcised. At one point I had a gun placed in my right -- near my right ear and it was fired because they wanted me to answer a specific question.
And you were constantly beaten when you went to the -- had to go to the bathroom or when you -- whenever you were interrogated.
O'BRIEN: The money is there. The president has said, however, that that $1.7 billion is going to be confiscated to assist the Iraqi people in reconstructing Iraq.
Do you feel as if basically the money has been taken out of your pocket and given to the Iraqi people?
FOX: Well, yes. I believe that, you know, under the legal system and we should be able to access those frozen assets and whatever is remaining should then be able to go back to the citizens of Iraq.
O'BRIEN: Steve, there is some hope for your case from Congress, as you mentioned before, with the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002.
Explain to me how you think that this will specifically help your case here.
FENNEL: When Congress speaks like that, Congress possesses the constitutional power. They've delegated that to the president to some extent. But if they say our delegation is limited, that we want these funds to be available to fight the war on terrorism and we want these funds to be available to pay victims of these kind of barbaric acts, then Congress' voice should be heard first. And we believe that the president should realize that and the president, having signed that act, should also realize that was his voice, as well.
O'BRIEN: Have you heard from the president? Have you heard from the White House?
FENNEL: We have sought to have a meeting with the White House and have been told to speak to the State Department, which has held a view before the Bush administration, a long held view that it alone should have sole discretion over any assets.
O'BRIEN: Jeff Fox and Steve Fennel, thanks to both of you for joining us this morning.
Appreciate it.
FENNEL: Thank you, Soledad.
FOX: Thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Judgment>
Aired July 11, 2003 - 08:12 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Seventeen POWs who were tortured by Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War have won nearly a billion dollars in court. But they're having trouble collecting.
Retired Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Fox is one of those who sued to collect a share of frozen Iraqi assets. But President Bush has directed that the money be used instead to rebuild Iraq.
Lieutenant Colonel Fox is joining us now from Charlotte, South Carolina this morning. His lawyer, Steve Fennel, is in Washington, D.C.
Steve, let's start with you.
We're talking about new legal ground here. As we mentioned, the judge awarded the plaintiffs just under a billion dollars. So what exactly is the hold up in collecting?
STEVE FENNEL, POW'S LAWYER: The hold up in collecting, Soledad, is that Congress in late 2002 passed a law that said if we received this judgment, we could obtain payment out of frozen assets in this country. There are $1.7 billion in frozen Iraqi assets in this country. On the eve of the second Gulf War, the president took that money out of those frozen accounts and put it under the U.S. Treasury and it now sits in the Federal Reserve Bank in New York.
We're going to take the president and Congress at their word in 2002 when they passed this law, that those assets are available to us. But we don't know what the administration is going to do. We hope that President Bush, properly briefed, will do the right thing and release the funds to the POWs.
O'BRIEN: Jeff, you flew a mission over Iraqi air space on February 19, 1991, as a lieutenant colonel.
What happened on that day?
JEFF FOX, LT. COL., USAF (RETIRED): Well, I was -- the aircraft was struck by a surface to air missile and I was forced to eject. And I was captured and eventually was taken up to Baghdad.
O'BRIEN: Give me a sense, over the next 15 days, what happened. You were tortured.
FOX: Well, in the course of the next 15 days I was -- you were always handcuffed, blindfolded. I was kept in the trunk of a vehicle. You were taken out. I was beaten. Had my ear drum broken. On two occasions I was stripped naked and checked to see if was circumcised. At one point I had a gun placed in my right -- near my right ear and it was fired because they wanted me to answer a specific question.
And you were constantly beaten when you went to the -- had to go to the bathroom or when you -- whenever you were interrogated.
O'BRIEN: The money is there. The president has said, however, that that $1.7 billion is going to be confiscated to assist the Iraqi people in reconstructing Iraq.
Do you feel as if basically the money has been taken out of your pocket and given to the Iraqi people?
FOX: Well, yes. I believe that, you know, under the legal system and we should be able to access those frozen assets and whatever is remaining should then be able to go back to the citizens of Iraq.
O'BRIEN: Steve, there is some hope for your case from Congress, as you mentioned before, with the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002.
Explain to me how you think that this will specifically help your case here.
FENNEL: When Congress speaks like that, Congress possesses the constitutional power. They've delegated that to the president to some extent. But if they say our delegation is limited, that we want these funds to be available to fight the war on terrorism and we want these funds to be available to pay victims of these kind of barbaric acts, then Congress' voice should be heard first. And we believe that the president should realize that and the president, having signed that act, should also realize that was his voice, as well.
O'BRIEN: Have you heard from the president? Have you heard from the White House?
FENNEL: We have sought to have a meeting with the White House and have been told to speak to the State Department, which has held a view before the Bush administration, a long held view that it alone should have sole discretion over any assets.
O'BRIEN: Jeff Fox and Steve Fennel, thanks to both of you for joining us this morning.
Appreciate it.
FENNEL: Thank you, Soledad.
FOX: Thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Judgment>
