Iraqi Cabinet approves $400 million settlement for American victims of Saddam

Iraq approves settlement for Saddam’s US victims

BAGHDAD — The Iraqi Cabinet unanimously approved a $400 million settlement for Americans who say they were abused by Saddam Hussein’s regime, the government spokesman said Thursday.

The agreement represents a significant step forward for Iraq and could bring an end to years of legal battles by Americans who claim to have been tortured or traumatized under Saddam’s regime dating back to the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

The deal is likely to anger Iraqis who consider themselves the victims of both Saddam’s regime and the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and they wonder why they should pay money for wrongs committed by the ousted dictator.

Saddam’s government held hundreds of Americans hostage during the run-up to the 1991 Gulf War, using them as human shields in hopes of staving off an attack by the U.S. and its allies and many have since pursued law suits against the Iraqi government.

The settlement needs to be approved by the Iraqi parliament, a big hurdle, given the likely public outcry over the deal and the fact that the legislature has only met once since the March 7 elections. The vote produced no clear winner, leaving Iraq still without a new government.

Government spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, did not mention the dollar amount that Iraq had agreed to pay in the statement released Thursday, but Iraqi officials previously have said that according to the agreement, signed Sept. 2, Iraq would pay about $400 million to Americans affected by the Kuwait invasion.

Any amount Iraq agreed on as compensation for the American victims of Saddam should be seen favorably and as a compromise between the two sides, given that the U.S. claims “exceed $10 billion,” al-Dabbagh said.

He emphasized the importance of the deal with the Americans since it could pave the way to persuading the U.N. to lift sanctions imposed after the Kuwait invasion. The sanctions include the freezing of Iraqi assets abroad.

The Americans involved kept up their legal fight even after Saddam was overthrown in 2003 and a new government came to power. CBS News correspondent Bob Simon, who was held for more than a month during the Gulf War, was one of the people suing Iraq.

In other developments, the U.S. military said an American airman was killed and a soldier was wounded in a controlled detonation — a routine process to dispose of bombs and munitions — at the Joint Base Balad, north of Baghdad.

The military said the incident, which happened Wednesday, is under investigation.

The death raises to at least 4,419 the number of U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003 according to an Associated Press count.

Also on Thursday, relatives of the Kurdish journalist, kidnapped and killed in May after criticizing officials in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish north, dismissed the official probe stating the reporter had links with Islamic militants who might been responsible for his death.

Sardasht Othman, 23, was snatched in front of the campus of University of Salahuddin in the regional capital of Irbil.

His handcuffed and bullet-riddled body was later found in the city of Mosul, which has been a haven for al-Qaida in Iraq.

The brother of the slain journalist, Bakir Othman, dismissed the official report as “fabricated” and told the AP the findings were “baseless.”

“My brother had no links with any terrorist groups,” Othman said in a phone interview on Thursday from his home in Sweden. “The claims of the Kurdish Regional Government have deepened our wounds. They have killed my brother once again.”

Othman’s killing drawn new attention to long-standing allegations of government-sanctioned abuse of media and freedom of expression in the self-rule region.

Meanwhile, in Samarra, north of Baghdad, a suicide bomber blew himself up in front of the city’s Awakening Council office, killing two members of the government-backed Sunni militia that has fought al-Qaida, police and hospital officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

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Associated Press Writers Sinan Salaheddin in Baghdad and Yahya Barzanji in Sulaimaniyah, Iraq, contributed to this report.