The Tehran hostages’ endless siege: A quest for compensation and closure
The remaining hostages — 13 of the 52 have died — are keenly aware that they can’t recover lost time, so they are looking with increasing urgency for another kind of restitution. They have turned to Congress in a bid for compensation for their captivity — for solitary confinement and mock firing squads, for beatings with rubber hoses and being hung, like laundry, over open elevator shafts, or run, blindfolded, into trees. And for the toll all this took on their families.
They’ve pinned their hopes on legislation sponsored by Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia (home state of three former hostages), which “almost made it,” the Republican senator says, into December’s mammoth spending bill.
They’re watching negotiations underway between the United States and Iran, wondering whether there will finally be an end to the diplomatic standoff prompted by their horrifying ordeals — and how that might affect their cause.
And, 35 years on, as some of the hostages live out their last years, they are aware that if anyone is to benefit from a long-awaited windfall, it will probably be the next generation — Firestone’s generation.
full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-tehran-hostages-endless-siege-a-quest-for-compensation-and-closure/2015/02/02/3463ebec-861e-11e4-9534-f79a23c40e6c_story.html
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