U.S. court orders Iran to pay $247.5 million to N.J. family

WASHINGTON, March 15 (JTA) — As he stood in a federal courtroom here, listening to a judge issue a landmark ruling, Stephen Flatow’s thoughts turned to his daughter’s smiling face. “Alisa had this very big smile on her face all the time, and she’s smiling today,” Flatow said last week, moments after U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth ordered Iran to pay $247.5 million in damages for its role in the 1995 terrorist bombing of an Israeli bus that claimed his daughter’s life. The decision marks the largest judgment against a foreign nation deemed responsible for a terrorist act and the first of its kind involving a state sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East. Iran condemned the judge’s move as “irresponsible in the extreme” and “politically motivated.” The ruling, which comes at a time of warming relations between the United States and Iran, is expected to pave the way for similar legal action by other families of American citizens killed in terrorist attacks abroad. Alisa Flatow, a 20-year-old Brandeis University student from West Orange, N.J., was attending a Jerusalem yeshiva when she and seven Israeli soldiers were killed by a suicide bomber who drove a van into their bus in the Gaza Strip in April 1995. Flatow was traveling through Gaza to a Jewish settlement for Passover when the bus was attacked. Left with shrapnel in her brain, she lapsed into a coma from which she never awoke. At a hearing earlier this month, the Flatow family argued that the Islamic Jihad — the Palestinian extremist group that claimed responsibility for the attack — received financing from the Iranian government, and therefore Tehran bore responsibility for her death. Lamberth agreed, saying he concluded from expert testimony that Iran had appropriated about $75 million to terrorist activities in support of the Palestinians in 1995. He said Iran was “brazen” enough to carry a line item in its budget pertaining to sponsorship of terrorist activities. “This is a tragic case, but you’ve made something of it,” Lamberth told the Flatow family upon awarding them $225 million in punitive damages and $22.5 million in compensatory damages. “This court seeks to deter further terrorist acts against Americans who may be in Israel or elsewhere,” the judge said. He added that he hoped the ruling “is not an occasion for further terrorist action” — a fear that the Islamic Jihad quickly sought to prey on when it called on its members to attack Israeli soldiers and settlers in response to the decision. Iran, which denies connections to terrorist groups, did not defend itself in the case. In a statement released by its U.N. mission after the verdict, the Iranian government said the allegations raised in the court’s “hurried proceedings” were “without a shred of substantiation, have no basis in fact and fail any standard of evidence.” The United States has designated Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism since 1984. In the courtroom, the decision brought gasps and a visible sense of relief to the Flatow family — Alisa’s father, mother, a brother and two of her three sisters — and other spectators, including Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and Rep. Jim Saxton (R-N.J.). Lautenberg said the decision ensures that “terrorist acts against American citizens will cause some pain back in the country that sponsors that kind of terrorism.” “No nation can pick on American citizens without our country responding in some lawful but direct way,” Lautenberg said, a view echoed by many Jewish groups that hailed the ruling. The case was brought under a 1996 anti-terrorism law, drafted by Lautenberg and Saxton with Flatow and other terror victims in mind, that allows U.S. citizens to file suit in U.S. courts against countries that have been designated sponsors of terrorism. Only one other country has been ordered to pay damages under the new law. In December a federal judge in Miami ordered Cuba and its air force to pay about $187 million to the families of three U.S. citizens whose unarmed planes were shot down by Cuban fighter jets over international waters last year. Whether the Flatow family will be successful in collecting the damages awarded them remains far from clear. Steven Perles, a lawyer representing the Flatow family, said the money could come either from Iranian assets in the United States frozen after the 1979 Iranian revolution or from Iranian assets in other nations that recognize the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. “We anticipate vigorously pursuing collection,” Perles said, adding that Iran is a “wealthy country.” Whether or not such a course becomes available to the Flatows, some observers said the family’s ability to collect may carry less importance than the symbolic value of such a large and forceful judgment. Flatow said the amount of the award was important because it was “significant enough that the Iranians will pay attention to it.” The decision came quicker than the Flatows or their lawyers imagined. “A year and a half ago, we thought this lawsuit would have taken us 10 years and here we are now,” Flatow told reporters outside the federal courthouse. Flatow, an Orthodox Jew who decided to donate his daughter’s organs to needy Israelis, said he had never sought revenge, only justice. In an interview after the judge’s ruling, he recalled meeting in May of 1996 with President Clinton, whom he said marveled at his bravery. “Would you do anything for your daughter?” he remembers asking Clinton. “Absolutely,” Clinton said. “Well, just because my daughter is not standing here with me doesn’t mean we stop,” Flatow said. “We still have a responsibility to our kids, even when they’re not here physically.”