Gold Star families accusing banks of aiding terrorists
Anne Smedinghoff, a Foreign Service officer at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, was escorting Afghan journalists on an outing when a roadside bomb killed her in 2013. The bomb’s design relied on fertilizer made in Pakistan, at two factories that regularly supplied a nearby Taliban bombmaking operation — a fact that U.S. authorities had publicized.
The factories, Fatima Fertilizer and Pakarab Fertilizers, were not fly-bynight organizations. Both did business in U.S. dollars through accounts at the London-based bank Standard Chartered.
Now Smedinghoff’s family and a group of nearly 500 others — including soldiers and civilians who were severely wounded in Afghanistan and their families, along with the families of victims who were killed — are accusing some of the world’s largest banks of helping terrorists carry out their attacks. Among the defendants are Deutsche Bank, Standard Chartered and Danske Bank.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit, filed Thursday in federal court in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, include 115 Gold Star families — relatives of American military service members killed in the war — as well as relatives of noncombatants such as Smedinghoff. They are seeking billions of dollars in damages, arguing that the banks provided accounts, transfers and other routine services to companies and individuals who they knew were helping terrorist networks responsible for hundreds of deadly attacks.
The lawsuit will be a powerful test of the reach of a 2016 anti-terrorism law, the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act. It allows terrorism victims and their families to seek relief from people, entities and countries that have provided “material support, directly or indirectly, to foreign organizations or persons that engage in terrorist activities against the United States.”
The suit filed Thursday takes a broad approach: It cites relationships that banks had with people and companies that dealt with the attackers, rather than services provided directly to known terrorists.
This single degree of remove could allow the banks to argue that their activities were not directly related to the bombings that the lawsuit describes because their customers were legitimate businesses, even if those customers had dealings with criminals. If successful, the suit could open the door to a flood of similar cases.
A representative of Danske Bank had no immediate comment. Representatives of Deutsche Bank and Standard Chartered declined to comment.
The 2016 law was passed to give terrorism victims more leeway to sue governments and other entities that they believe have aided terrorism. Before it passed, such suits could go forward only against entities that the U.S. government had designated as state sponsors of terror. The law was written to help families of victims of 9/11 pursue claims against Saudi Arabia for its role in aiding Osama bin Laden.