Thanks Felix for this bit of news.  I think it is about time.  There is a
precedent already in place when the holocaust survivors successfully sued
and actually collected billions of dollars.  "The day of reckoning has
arrived" indeed.  Thanks again.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Felix Ossia" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, June 17, 2002 6:27 PM
Subject: Lawsuit Targets Apartheid-Era Cos.


> Lawsuit Targets Apartheid-Era Cos.
> By RAVI NESSMAN
> Associated Press Writer
>
> June 17, 2002, 5:21 PM EDT
>
> SOWETO, South Africa -- Standing at the site where apartheid police killed
> her brother decades ago, Lulu Petersen said Monday she hoped a
class-action
> lawsuit against foreign companies that dealt with the racist, white regime
> would finally bring her family justice.
>
> "It's been too long," said Petersen, whose 12-year-old brother, Hector,
was
> killed during the Soweto uprising 26 years ago. "We want reparations from
> those international companies and banks that profited from the blood and
> misery of our fathers and mothers and our brothers and sisters."
>
> The Petersen family was one of four plaintiffs suing Citigroup, the
largest
> financial institution in the United States, and Swiss banking giants UBS
and
> Credit Suisse.
>
> Lawyers for the victims hoped hundreds of thousands of people would join
the
> lawsuit, which is seeking billions of dollars in reparations and will be
> filed Tuesday in New York, lawyer Bruce Nagel said.
>
> Credit Suisse spokeswoman Karin Rhomberg said the bank saw no grounds for
> the lawsuit and said the company should not be held responsible for
> apartheid's crimes. UBS spokesman Michael Willi declined to comment
Sunday.
>
> A call to Citigroup was not immediately returned.
>
> The lawsuit was announced Monday at a news conference at the Hector
Petersen
> memorial in Soweto.
>
> Petersen was killed after police began firing tear gas and live bullets at
> thousands of protesting students. A photograph of a man running with the
> dying boy in his arms became an international symbol of apartheid's
> injustices.
>
> The lawsuit was being filed by Ed Fagan, an American attorney who
> represented Holocaust victims and their heirs in a lawsuit that forced
Swiss
> banks into a $1.25 billion settlement in 1998.
>
> At a separate news conference Monday in Zurich, Switzerland, Fagan was
> heckled by about 50 protesters -- angry at his role in the Holocaust
> lawsuit -- as he tried to speak outdoors.
>
> "The day of reckoning has arrived," Fagan later told reporters after
moving
> the news conference to a local hotel. "This is only the beginning," he
said,
> adding that lawsuits were planned against other Swiss and U.S. firms and
> companies in France, Britain and Germany.
>
> Apartheid was an oppressive web of racist laws starting in 1948 that
> classified all South Africans by race and stripped even the most basic
> rights from those who were not white.
>
> As efforts to overthrow the white regime grew, authorities began jailing
> some opponents, killing others without trial and chasing still others from
> their homes. The regime ended in 1994 with the election of Nelson Mandela
as
> president in the nation's first all-race elections.
>
> The lawyers said the three targeted companies helped prop up the white
> government, which was struggling as foreign capital fled the country, with
> loans and other business deals worth billions of dollars. The help came
even
> after the United Nations asked all member states to break off diplomatic,
> trade and transport relations with South Africa in 1962.
>
> "Were it not for the conspiracy of these financial institutions and
> companies, apartheid would not have been kept alive," the lawsuit said.
> "Were it not for the conspiracy of these financial institutions and
> companies, men, women, children and families would not have suffered from
> forced removals, forced labor, imprisonment, banishment, kidnapping,
> torture, disfigurement, murders, massacres, psychological trauma and
> terror."
>
> The lawyers declined to say how much they were seeking in damages, but
said
> they expected billions of dollars. That money would not be distributed to
> individuals, but used collectively to help alleviate the impact of
apartheid
> by building schools or houses, for example, said Diane Sammons, a U.S.
> lawyer working on the case.
>
> "When everybody else was divesting, the Swiss banks took up the cause and
> added much more money," she said. "They continued to profit from these
> crimes against humanity, torture, murder."
> Copyright © 2002, The Associated Press
>
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