Published Wednesday, July 26, 2000, in the Miami Herald . Editorial.
Victims of terrorism won't compromise justice
The Miami relatives of fliers murdered by the Cuban regime could have taken some $50 million and ended their frustrating legal battles. So, too, six other American families could have gone home with multimillion-dollar settlements for claims awarded them in federal court as victims of terrorism.
That these families didn't take the money speaks volumes of their principled stand to protect the rights of other U.S. victims and to deter future terrorism. Equally loudly, the Clinton administration's settlement offer smacks of a government willing to sell out its own citizens rather than
offend thug states with merited punishment.
The Miami families went to federal court after the Cuban Air Force shot down four fliers in Brothers-to-the-Rescue planes over international waters in 1996. Late in 1997, the families were awarded $187.6 million, including punitive damages, to be taken from the Cuban regime's money frozen in
U.S. bank accounts. It was the first judgment under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, promoted by President Clinton as a means for Americans to obtain justice.
Since then federal courts have granted huges awards in another four lawsuits, the largest being $341 million to Terry Anderson, the reporter kidnapped by a Iran-sponsored terrorist group.
From the start, the families rightly have insisted that the purpose of punitive damages is to send a clear message: Terrorism doesn't pay. If the U.S. government can't communicate that through diplomacy or criminal charges, then a stiff monetary penalty could be the only way to get the message
across to an amoral state.
Yet the administration shamelessly has blocked the families from collecting awards and punishing the terrorists. Only now, as Congress threatens to force the release of Cuba's and Iran's money, did Treasury Deputy Secretary Stuart Eizenstat put a settlement offer in writing.
But the families refused to compromise justice for money; they wouldn't accept that this offer excluded penalties for the terrorist states and would stop other Americans from collecting under similar anti-terrorism lawsuits, including the relatives of those killed in the Pan Am 103 bombing.
The families took the moral high road. Now the Clinton administration should join them.
Copyright 2000 Miami Herald |