Terror victimsFamilies of terror attacks victims can claim $2bn from Iran’s frozen assets: U.S. Supreme Court

Published 21 April 2016

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the families of victims from several Iran-directed or Iran-related terrorist attacks in the 1980s and 1990s can collect close to $2 billion from Iran’s frozen assets. The Supreme Court, in a 6-2 decision, upheld a lower court’s ruling that Congress was within its remit to pass the law requiring Iran to do so.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the families of victims from several Iran-directed or Iran-related terrorist attacks in the 1980s and 1990s can collect close to $2 billion from Iran’s frozen assets.

The Supreme Court, in a 6-2 decision, upheld a lower court’s ruling, awarding damages to the families of those killed in the 1983 bombings of a U.S. Marine barracks and the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, and other attacks for which Iran has been responsible.

CNN reports that the plaintiffs include more than 1,300 relatives of the victims, led by Deborah Peterson, the sister of one of the 241 Americans killed in the 1983 barracks bombing.

The Beirut attacks were carried out by Lebanese Shia militias, trained and backed by Iran. The militias, in 1985, united to form Hezbollah.

Peterson and other family members of the Beirut bombing victims first filed a lawsuit against Iran in 2001. Iran’s liability was accepted by a U.S. federal court in 2007, and in 2008 it was discovered that Iran’s central Bank, Bank Markazi, had $1.75 billion in bond assets frozen in a New York account.

President Barack Obama, in 2012, signed a law ordering Bank Markazi to turn over its assets, but the bank was able to beat back orders from lower courts to turn over the assets.

The case before the Supreme Court did not involve the question of Iran’s reimbursing the plaintiffs, but rather the question of whether Congress had overstepped its authority by passing the law requiring Iran to do so.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing the Court’s majority opinion, said Congress had not acted outside its remit. “By altering the law governing the attachment of particular property belonging to Iran, Congress acted comfortably within the political branches’ authority over foreign sovereign immunity and foreign-state assets,” she wrote.

This was a rare case in which the Obama administration and GOP lawmakers agreed on its merit.