American Victims of Hamas Attack on Israel Plan to Sue North Korea
“The rockets that we find, even the ones that are produced inside Gaza or the ones that are produced in Iran — all of the RPG-7s, for example — are using parts that come from North Korea,” said Sharon-Kettler.
He said the rockets were assembled with North Korean rocket engines, which give them capabilities to “penetrate heavy armor” and cause greater damage.
Darshan-Leiter said the rockets give Hamas the ability to attack civilians without being inside Israel.
“Once Israel built a fence around Gaza, Hamas terrorists can no longer go into Israel and carry out attacks inside,” she said. Before Hamas breached the border fence on October 7, “the only way that Hamas could kill Israeli people is by these rockets.”
Normally, foreign states are immune from being sued in a U.S. court under the Foreign Service Immunities Act, unless an exception applies. But if a foreign state is listed as a state-sponsored terrorist group, U.S. citizens can bring a lawsuit against that country.
In November 2017, North Korea was redesignated as a state sponsor of terrorism after being taken off the list in 2008. It was first designated in 1988 for blowing up a Korean Airline passenger flight in mid-air the previous year, killing all 115 people aboard.
North Korea was sued a number of times over the past several years. The most notable was a suit brought against the regime by the parents of Otto Warmbier, an American student who in 2017 died shortly after returning to the U.S. in a vegetative state following detention in North Korea.
A judge from a D.C. federal court ruled in 2018 that Cindy and Fred Warmbier were entitled to $500 million in damages from North Korea.
In October, a federal court in New York ordered the New York Mellon Bank to turn over to Cindy and Fred Warmbier approximately $2.2 million in frozen funds originally owned by a sanctioned Russian bank where North Korea’s Air Koryo kept an account.
In another case, Americans who were injured and the family members of U.S. citizens killed in an attack at the Lod Airport in 1972 — now Ben Gurion International Airport, near Tel Aviv — filed a complaint against North Korea in 2022.
According to court documents, they are seeking damages from North Korea for its role in sponsoring the attack.
The attack killed 26 people and injured 80 and was carried out by three members of the Japanese Red Army who were reportedly recruited by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
The U.S. designated the group as a terrorist organization in 1997 but revoked the designation in 2001 when the group disbanded.
Jiha Ham is International Broadcaster at Voice of America. Sanghoon Lee is Multimedia Specialist at the Voice of America. Christy Lee is Staff Reporter, East Asia and Pacific (EAP) Division, VOA News. This article is published courtesy of the Voice of America (VOA).
