Financial Times – American victims of the 1983 bombing of the US embassy in Beirut said on Thursday they were planning to take legal action against Iran through European courts following a similar case that has already resulted in the freezing of Iranian assets held in a Rome bank account.
Twenty-nine victims of the suicide truck bomb that killed 63 people, including 17 Americans, won a court ruling on Wednesday in the US district court for Washington that Iran should pay $126m in damages.
Judge John Bates, in a 94-page opinion, cited evidence showing Iran had provided Hizbollah – the perpetrators of the Beirut attack – with arms, financial aid and other support.
The US government says there are no Iranian assets frozen in the US that can be used as compensation. As a result the plaintiffs are planning to target Iranian funds in Europe, where Iran has diplomatic and business ties.
“It is another example of the globalisation of our lives,” said Anne Dammarell, the lead plaintiff and former UAS aid worker who was injured in the suicide attack.
A precedent was set last week when a civil court in Rome adopted a US court ruling that ordered Iran to compensate three American families for their relatives killed by Palestinian suicide bombers allegedly backed by Iran. The Rome court ordered Banca Nazionale del Lavoro to freeze an account held by the Iranian government. The amount was not disclosed.
Iran lodged a diplomatic protest with Italy’s foreign ministry. It also threatened financial retaliation, fearing a flood of similar lawsuits that could entangle its assets in Europe.
Iran News, an Iranian daily, warned in an editorial believed to reflect the views of the foreign ministry that the Islamic Republic would “most probably interpret this court ruling as a hostile act by the Italian government against Iran and is likely to retaliate in kind”.
The editorial cautioned: “The officials in charge might conclude that if they do not act decisively vis-a-vis this unfriendly and undiplomatic ruling, similar steps by other European countries might be just around the corner.”
Michael Martinez, attorney for Ms Dammarell and more than 80 plaintiffs linked to the 1983 Beirut bombing, said there were three reasons for choosing Italy: its independent judiciary, its acceptance of the concept of seeking legal redress for terrorist acts and the belief that Iran had a lot of assets in Italy from oil trading.
In 1996 the US Congress amended the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act to permit American citizens to bring lawsuits against foreign states that had committed or supported terrorist acts and were deemed by the US State Department to be state sponsors of terrorism. That list presently includes Iran, Syria, North Korea, Cuba, Libya and Sudan.
Ms Dammarell said she found it “psychologically liberating” to be able to hold someone responsible for the attack.
A person source close to the lawsuits said that whereas the Bush administration had actively helped in bringing similar cases against Libya, it appeared unwilling to assist in the cases involving Iran, possibly because negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme have reached a very delicate stage.
