Rewards for Justice

The Rewards for Justice Program, administered by the Bureau of Diplomatic Security in the U.S. Department of State, was created in 1984 by the U.S. Congress as part of the Act to Combat International [Page 318]Terrorism. The monetary rewards are an incentive to potential informants to provide law enforcement agencies with information about any terrorist act, planned or carried out, against U.S. citizens. Acts and people that the Rewards for Justice Program has specifically targeted include the 1994 genocide in Rwanda; Serbian leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic; Eric Rudolph for the 1996 Olympic bombings in Atlanta, Georgia; and the kidnapping and murder of journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan.

More than $22 million has been paid to a total of 22 informants in recent years. Information about most of these cases is classified. Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, later convicted of the 1993 World ...