Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga. Brennan Linsley/AP
Compensation Plan for U.S. Hostages Held in Iran Advances
President Obama expected to sign nuclear-talks act with pledge separate from Isakson bill.
The Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act now working its way to President Obama’s desk contains “sense of the Congress” language demanding “fair and appropriate compensation” for the 52 diplomats and their survivors who were held hostage in Tehran for 444 days after the 1979 Iranian revolution.
A detailed plan spelling out the amounts and source of such compensation (penalties imposed on businesses that violate sanctions against Iran) is moving separately in a bill by Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga. It is set to be marked up on May 21 at a business meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
A class action lawsuit involving as many as 151 individuals directly or indirectly affected decades later by the torture and abuse in Iran’s Evin Prison has been pursued for years. It has been complicated by the 1981 Algiers Accords signed by President Jimmy Carter that freed the hostages but shielded the Iranian government from later legal attack.
The larger bill that cleared the Senate May 7 and the House May 14—which capped a negotiation between Congress and the White House over congressional say in the executive agreement the administration hopes to finalize with Iran-- includes language adding several conditions not currently in the publicly released negotiating framework.
Those include Iran addressing its human rights abuses, ballistic missiles and continued support of terrorism, and “fair and appropriate compensation for Americans who were terrorized and subjected to torture while held in captivity for 444 days after the seizure of the United States Embassy in Tehran, Iran,” according to the legislation. These matters are “critical to ensure justice and the national security of the United States, and should be expeditiously addressed.”
“A lot of people have forgotten about what happened in 1979,” Isakson said on the Senate floor May 7. “We owe it to these Americans to make sure they’re compensated, and to make sure it comes from the money that would have gone to the Iranians” that was taken from the penalties for doing business with Iran under the sanctions legislation.
Thus far, there is no House companion bill to Isakson’s, but a spokesman for the hostages says there is plenty of interest in the House.