American victims of terror attacks perpetrated by Iran-backed groups have filed suit to prevent the United States from unfreezing Iranian bank accounts as part of the recent nuclear deal between Tehran and the West.
The lawsuit, organized by Shurat HaDin – Israel Law Center, is on behalf of two dozen American terror victims who have already been awarded more than $1 billion in judgments by American courts against Iran due to the Islamic Republic’s sponsorship of terror groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Iran has yet to pay these judgments. Under the nuclear deal reach with Iran, more than $100 billion in Iranian funds will be unfrozen, which the plaintiffs argue will eliminate any leverage they have of receiving what U.S. courts have already ruled they are owed.
“It would be outrageous to release the $100 billion in frozen Iranian funds when these American families have unpaid court judgments against the terror sponsoring regime in Tehran” Shurat HaDin director Nitsana Darshan-Leitner said in a statement. “For more than a decade Iran has refused to pay these court judgments and has thumbed its nose at these terror-victim families and the U.S. court system. The $100 billion in frozen funds is the last leverage the families have to compel Iran to satisfy their judgments. If you release these funds you erase all hope for the families of ever getting a measure of justice against this outlaw regime.”
Darshan-Leitner was profiled last year by Tower editor David Hazony in The Woman Who Makes the Jihadis Squirm.
Through her nonprofit legal center, Shurat HaDin (“letter of the law” in Hebrew), Nitsana has spent the last decade and a half battling terrorism through civil lawsuits. Representing terror victims from Israel, the United States, Canada, Iran, and elsewhere, she files motions and seizes assets and sends warnings. She has become a menace to terrorists, putting them on their heels, forcing them and their sponsors to spend vast sums on legal fees, to stop using the Western banking industry, to smuggle cash through tunnels instead of using the banks.
In the process she has revolutionized the way the civilized world deals with terrorism. Governments that clearly back terror organizations—like Iran, Syria, North Korea, and the Palestinian Authority—have found their assets frozen, even turned over to victims. Terrorist groups, states that sponsor terror, banks that facilitate terror financing, companies that do business with terrorists—all of these have found themselves diverting attention, resources, and immense energies to dealing with high-profile lawsuits. Major corporations have discovered that they cannot operate with impunity.
The numbers alone tell a big part of the story. In the last decade, Nitsana’s team has won over $1 billion in judgments. These have resulted in the freezing of over $600 million in assets around the world—money that otherwise would be funding terror operations. And over $120 million in actual awards have been transferred into the hands of the victims.
[Photo: Sheila / Wikimedia]