Smith Wants to Make Terrorists Pay
WASHINGTON, April 16–Sen. Bob Smith (R-NH) introduced legislation on Tuesday that would allow victims of state-sponsored terrorism, including former Kingston resident William Van Dorp, to collect from the frozen assets of sponsoring nations.
Van Dorp, 50, was working in Kuwait in 1990 when he was taken hostage by Iraqi soldiers on Aug. 16, two weeks after Iraqi President Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion of the small bordering nation. He was released on Dec. 6.
As part of a class-action lawsuit, Van Dorp is suing Iraq for “in-between $100- and $200,000” in pain and suffering, he said after a press conference on Tuesday. After his 106-day ordeal, Van Dorp said, he was emotionally distraught and unable to find work in the United States as lucrative as his work teaching English to members of the Kuwaiti Air Force.
Smith joined Sens. Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Sen. George Allen (R-VA) – the main sponsors of the bill – and Sens. John Warner (R-VA) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) in announcing the legislation, the Terrorism Victims’ Access to Compensation Act, while standing alongside Van Dorp and five other victims of state-sponsored terrorism.
Smith said the bill is needed because while current laws allow citizens such as Van Dorp to sue terrorists, the plaintiffs have been unable to collect damages. The Treasury Department, Smith said, now has approximately $3.7 billion in blocked or frozen assets from seven countries identified as state sponsors of terrorism: Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.
Last year, Congress passed legislation directing the administration to develop a plan by February of this year to compensate victims of state-sponsored attacks. The administration has not responded. Previously, former President Clinton signed a law endorsing such a move but then blocked payment.
“Saddam Hussein, ironically, as recently as this month, had offered $25,000 to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers,” Smith said. “The State Department’s excuse for not supporting us on this is that if they want to do it, they want the liberty of negotiating with the Iraqis, I say come on now, let’s get real. We have the assets, they are seized, let’s give them to people who deserve them.”
Van Dorp spent most of his time in captivity as a so-called human shield in a fertilizer factory in the Iraqi town of Khor-Al-Zubair. He was the only American among 16 hostages.
They were moved next to the refinery’s ovens after a few weeks, he said in testimony for his lawsuit, because his captors wanted them to “die with the Iraqis when the Americans bombed.”
“This episode is 11-plus years behind me,” Van Dorp said on Tuesday. “I’ve forgotten parts of it. But I’m very happy there’s a new interest in our case. I’m glad justice is being served.”
Van Dorp said he lost 30 pounds from stress. After he returned to the United States, his ex-wife sued for custody of their five children, citing his post-traumatic stress disorder. He did not find a full time job unit 1994, three years after he returned.
Van Dorp’s case against Iraq, which he and other victims have in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, is “still on a judge’s desk,” he said. He does not know how he would spend his money if awarded.
Smith said the bill would help other Granite State terrorism victims, such Jeffrey Ingalls of Woodstock, who was on board TWA flight 847 when it was hijacked from Athens to Beirut in 1985.
One of the five other victims who spoke along with Van Dorp on Tuesday was also on that flight. Others were the wife of a man killed when Iranian-backed terrorists hijacked his Kuwait Airlines flight bound for Karachi, Pakistan, in 1984 and a woman held hostage for 44 days in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979.
“Our nation is at war against terrorism,” Smith said. “This is just one more way we tell the terrorists they will be held accountable.”
Van Dorp returned to Kingston, where he lived since 1988, after Christmas of 1990. He now lives on Long Island and teaches English to non-native speakers in Brooklyn.
Published in The Union Leader, in Manchester, New Hampshire
