A former United States Marine who was held prisoner in Iran for more than four years is suing the regime, seeking damages for torture he endured while in custody, his lawyers announced Monday.
Amir Hekmati, an Iranian-American from Michigan, was convicted by the mullahs’ courts on vague espionage charges after being taken into custody while on a visit to Iran. He and three other Americans of Iranian descent were released earlier this year as part of a prisoner swap negotiated between the Iranian regime’s officials and the Obama administration.
The lawsuit has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and it seeks economic, compensatory, and punitive damages from a regime that does not have diplomatic ties with the United States and is unlikely to recognize any court ruling against it, according to POLITICO.
According to a news release, the complaint maintains that “Iran’s despicable behavior was outside the scope of immunity provided by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) and therefore subjects Iran to suit in the United States.” It says that Hekmati was subject to beatings, sleep deprivation, forced drugging and psychological abuse.
“Iran’s treatment of Amir Hekmati was utterly contemptible,” his attorney, Scott Gilbert, said in a statement. “Amir can never be adequately compensated for his suffering. … Our intention, with the filing of this lawsuit, is to attempt to provide at least some measure of justice for Amir and his family.”
Hekmati was in the Marines from 2001 to 2005 as an infantry rifleman and translator, serving in Iraq, according to the news release. He went to Iran to visit his grandmother in the summer of 2011, and was taken into custody just a few days before he was scheduled to return to the United States.
Iran’s regime doesn’t recognize dual nationality and it treated Hekmati as an Iranian citizen. Because of the lack of formal diplomatic relations with the Iranian regime, U.S. officials had no real access to him. But at the same time that American leaders were urging the Iranian regime to free Hekmati and other Americans, they were negotiating a nuclear deal with Tehran.
The release of Hekmati and the other imprisoned Iranian-Americans came the same day the nuclear deal was declared to have been formally implemented, although U.S. officials insisted the matters were kept on separate tracks.
Filing lawsuits against foreign governments is a tricky issue in the United States, but there are some exceptions when it comes to terrorism. Last month, in a move that angered Tehran, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a law that allowed victims of Iranian-sponsored terrorism to collect some $2 billion worth of seized Iranian assets.