At least, that's the way I read this:
"US asks judge to drop hostages' suit; 52 Americans held for more than year at embassy in Iran" by Nedra Pickler, Associated Press | April 23, 2009
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration has asked a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit against Iran filed by Americans held hostage at the US Embassy in Tehran 30 years ago.
The request was made in a $6.6 billion class-action lawsuit filed in US District Court in Washington. Fifty-two American diplomats and military officials were held captive for more than a year at the end of Jimmy Carter's presidency by a group of Islamist students who supported the Iranian revolution. The hostages were released on Jan. 20, 1981, just minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as the new president.
In what is INFAMOUSLY KNOWN as the OCTOBER SURPRISE whereby the Reagan campaign sent operatives to Spain (George H.W. Bush among them) and told the Iranians to hold on to them so they could get a better deal. Months after Reagan took office, Israel started acting as an intermediary to ship weapons to Iran -- in what would later mushroom into the Iran-Contra scandal.
I lived through it and I remember thinking it all smelled fishy at the time.
A similar lawsuit brought by the Iranian hostages was dismissed in 2000 after the government successfully argued it was banned by the Algiers Accords. The hostages argue that legislation passed by Congress last year and signed into law by President George W. Bush gives them the right to bring private lawsuits. But the Justice Department argued that the law does not mention the Algiers Accords, much less explicitly repeal them.
I guess that is change, 'eh?
The hostages argue that Iran supported their confinement and abuse, with visits from government officials, stays in government prisons and buildings and threats of trial in Iranian courts. The lawsuit says Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was one of their interrogators.
That's been debunked -- and yet the paper puts it in there anyway!
The lawsuit says the hostages were tortured, beaten sometimes until they lost consciousness and kept in fear of their lives.
Welcome to Gitmo or some other secret torture site the U.S. runs.
It says they were imprisoned without adequate food, clothing or medical care, blindfolded with their hands tied, interrogated for hours and kept in isolation.
--more--"
Gee, the AmeriKan government is very much like the mad mullahs, huh?
Paper never tells us why they were taken hostage, either.
They overthrew Iran's version of Saddam Hussein -- a guy named the Shah of Iran whom the U.S. brought to power in a coup and propped up for 25 years.
