On the 35th anniversary of their 1981 release, the 53 American hostages taken captive in Iran or their families celebrated a novel work-around engineered by Georgia Republican U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson that will grant most of them $4.4 million each.
Tucked deep into the year-end budget are provisions that grant 52 of the hostages $10,000 for each of the 444 days they were held captive. A 53rd hostage released earlier for medical reasons will receive a lesser amount. And all eligible spouses and children of the hostages will receive a $600,000 lump-sum payment.
It signals the end of a frustrating decades-long saga that has infuriated the former hostages and become a passion for Isakson.
The Algiers Accords, which President Jimmy Carter agreed to in order to get the hostages out, did not allow the hostages to sue Iran directly. Five years after their release, the U.S. government paid the hostages $22,000 each — or about $50 per day of captivity. But efforts in Congress and in the courts to secure more have fallen short, while the tenets of the accords have held up.
Isakson and a bipartisan group pushed for changes in the spending bill that includes the funding for the hostages as well as victims of some other state-sponsored terrorist attacks. The money comes from a judgment that forced the French bank BNP Paribas to pay a $9 billion penalty for violating sanctions against Iran, Cuba and Sudan.
“We want the former hostages to know they’ve been in our hearts and minds and prayers for years,” Isakson said Wednesday. “And today, we know it’s a bittersweet day having the memory of captivity combined with joy of knowing there finally will be compensation from the Iranians.”
The years have taken a toll on the ex-hostages. Many were terrorized, tortured and deprived of sleep and food while held captive. One committed suicide in 2012, and Tom Lankford, an attorney representing the group, said 15 in all have died since the crisis was resolved. Fourteen others are older than 78.
It took a unique coalition of senators working across party lines to get the group the funding. U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., commended Isakson and other senators for uniting to deliver “some degree of justice” to the ex-hostages.
“That we are here now, more than three decades after Iran seized 53 Americans at a U.S. Embassy, speaks as much to the justice these former hostages deserve as to the significant national trauma that unfolded during their long detention,” Menendez said. “Now these Americans — or their families — will finally receive financial compensation for their ordeal.”
Joe Hall, an Army operations coordinator at the embassy, was beaten and starved during his captivity in Iran. The 66-year-old, who lives in the town of Lenox in southwest Georgia, said he didn't need the money. But he was grateful that it would help his grandchildren, nieces and nephews go to college.
“I don’t know that money is the balm for everything that burns us,” he said. “But short of an apology from Iran, this is pretty special.”
Dave Roeder, a retired Air Force officer from Wisconsin, said he has a better understanding of the “meaning of freedom” in the years since his release. But he said even the financial compensation only goes so far in healing wounds that go beyond the scars on his forearms from being battered by rubber hoses.
“This doesn’t end it because we are going to continue to have problems,’’ Roeder said. “We can’t put together broken marriages and fix relationships between parents and estranged children.”
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