Video: US ex-diplomat campaigns for fair treatment of Brussels attack victims

A former US ambassador whose son-in-law was killed in the Brussels airport attack says Belgium should acknowledge "a horrible failure" and follow the example of the 9/11 compensation fund in treating victims equally and without delay.

On 22 March last year, James Cain and his wife Helen were told by their eldest daughter Cameron, 26, that she had secretly married her partner Alexander Pinczowski, 29 - and that he and his sister Sascha were missing in the Zaventem blast. Three agonising days later, the siblings - who were heading for New York - were confirmed dead.

"We were huddled down in the basement of Queen Astrid military hospital with really little attention and no counselling," James Cain recalls. "All family members suffered through that. It was total chaos. We felt, as did many victims, that there was a total lack of organisation and compassion."

Cain was due to appear before Belgium's parliamentary investigative committee on the attacks this Tuesday afternoon - not to focus on how authorities handled the crisis in the immediate aftermath, but to campaign for a fair and fast settlement for victims and their families, many of whom have complained about the treatment they had received from various government bodies and a lack of assistance or information.

"I'm under the impression it's going to get better," Cain told The Bulletin. "I certainly hope that there'll be more of a consensus to take politics out of this and just do what's right for the victims."

In a written submission to the committee, the former American ambassador to Denmark during the George W. Bush administration says the 9/11 victims' fund serves as a model that Belgium should follow.

"In America, our policymakers reacted immediately… they didn't want to wait years for victims to have to sue and litigate against the government and insurance companies," he says, pointing to Congress's approval of the fund within days of the 2001 atrocity.

Not all are treated equal

Cain says the current Belgian efforts to provide financial support to victims - including a disability pension and free healthcare - are restricted to Belgian citizens or permanent residents. At least 70 of the registered victims and relatives do not meet those criteria.

"Let's treat everyone equally whether they are Belgian residents or not," he says. "If you look at America's treatment (after 9/11), we had victims from 80 different nations. It didn't matter if you were legal, illegal, American or Chinese or Korean or Cuban."

He hopes to persuade the investigating committee on Tuesday that "we shouldn't cause these families to have to be victims again … let's not make these victims go through years of litigation".

"One of the newspapers in the US said that I'm the highest-ranking American to have a relative killed by ISIS," Cain told The Bulletin on the eve of his committee appearance.

"Most of all I'm here as a father who lost a son-in-law. My passionate desire is for justice to be found for the victims and their families - and for our daughter to find a path to hope and happiness again in life.

"It makes it more difficult for widows like Cameron when they feel there's such an unwillingness on the part of the public authorities to treat the victims in the way that they should be treated."

Love at first sight

Cameron met Alex - a Dutch citizen - at Duke university in Durham, North Carolina, about five years before the Brussels attacks. When Alex's student visa expired, they had a long-distance relationship and in late 2014 they married in secret to start his two-year visa US application process.

"I really don't think we would ever have found out they were married except for the fact Alex was killed," Cain says. Their plan was to have a traditional wedding ceremony - with everyone invited - this coming summer.

"They'd had a dream of starting a ceramics craft business together and they looked at Maastricht and Brussels as a place to have that business. They might have come back here eventually."