And Justice for All

The life sentences handed down last week to two Algerian Islamic extremists behind the 1995 bombing campaign on the Paris Métro — killing eight and injuring over 200 — closed a long and traumatic chapter for many victims and their families. But for Françoise Rudetzki, the result merely signaled a brief pause in her ongoing struggle to ensure that those injured or bereaved by terrorism get not only justice, but also the recognition, assistance, and dignity they deserve to carry on with their lives. With the month-long Paris trial now over, Rudetzki and her SOS Attentats (SOS Attacks) association face a different sort of battle: finding the funding necessary to survive the costly litigation rising from the terror cases to which they are civil parties. "Victims' rights aren't respected if victims themselves aren't involved to insist that justice is done," Rudetzki notes. "That requires courage, diligence and, alas, money."

Despite sos Attentats' financial straits, it would be unwise to bet on the 54-year-old Rudetzki renouncing the war on terror she declared 17 years ago. In 1983, she was thrown into a seven-week coma when a bomb planted by unknown assailants exploded in a Paris restaurant. Despite 45 operations, Rudetzki is still partially paralyzed.

Victims'rights aren't respected if they aren't involved to insist that justice is done. Q&A What does the guilty verdict for the Paris Métro bombers represent for the victims of the 1995 attacks? Justice, and some satisfaction. It's very important for victims to be able to face the people responsible for their suffering, and express all that's happened to them. It helps the healing process. But the trial, in the larger sense, is never over for victims of terrorism. Are you satisfied with the rights victims now enjoy in France? Oh no. A lot has changed for the better, but there was and continues to be great resistance. In general, governments would like victims to disappear as quickly as possible so they can get on with other business. Victims are viewed as symbols of a nation's loss following attacks, but are soon dismissed as complicated and expensive to deal with. In the U.S., victims defend themselves in the courts using enormous punitive damages as a weapon. In France, courts provide victims only legal justice; the monetary assistance we get from the state is limited, and never assured. Your funding comes from various ministries, and individual donors. What about businesses? They are conspicuously absent. Apart from McDonald's — which donated over 3150,000 to us after one of its restaurants was bombed in Brittany — no private business has accepted our appeals for funds. Not even big companies whose property, employees, and customers have been victimized by terrorism. After Sept. 11, companies from the U.S. and Europe — including most airlines — flocked to us for insight on the legal, medical, and insurance experience and partners we've had over time. We were very popular, right up until we asked for a little financial help in return. Will you get the money needed to carry on? We have to. The needs and numbers of victims are rising all the time, and no one will attend to them if we don't force that. That's what our war on terror has always done — and that's a battle that began long before Sept. 11.

Insult followed those injuries when she learned that because no one was killed in the blast a French press report had quipped: "The bomb created more noise than damage." Other shocks awaited: the insurance policy covering the restaurant provided only for property destroyed by terrorist acts, not human injury. Health-care services were uninterested and unprepared for the special needs of terror victims. The legally trained Rudetzki decided to do something.

She began relentlessly lobbying politicians and administrators for legislation adapted to victims of terrorism, a scourge she correctly predicted would affect increasing numbers of people. She founded SOS Attentats with other terror victims in 1986, the same year a bomb on the Champs Elysées killed two and wounded 21. That attack coincided with parliamentary elections, and Rudetzki's crusade for victims suddenly got a fuller hearing. Soon, France had its first law granting special status and assistance to terror victims; it also assured SOS Attentats limited funding from governmental bodies.

Periodic upgrading of that legislation has granted terror victims preferential rights as civilian casualties of war, and established 20 specialized treatment centers across France. A national indemnity fund for terror victims was also founded. The law gave sos Attentats a legal role representing victims as a civil party to all terror investigations and court cases. The group, with just a few volunteers working out of a tiny, state-provided office, has represented hundreds of victims in trials — over 200 in the Paris Métro case alone. It's party to proceedings arising from the Karachi bombing last May, and the Sept. 11 attacks, which killed five French citizens.

SOS Attentats is also party to a suit filed last month in a Washington, D.C. federal court against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi for his role in a 1989 French airline bombing, for which six Libyans have already been convicted — in absentia — by a French court. Because French law doesn't allow sitting foreign leaders to be cited in criminal cases, Rudetzki has relied on families of U.S. victims to file suit. But such cases, she notes, cost more than limited state funding and rare private donations allow. "Everyone feels supportive of victims after attacks, but walks away when the bills come in," she laments. "People forget that we're all preferred victims for terrorists."