Don’t Kill These Lawyers

More than two decades of dogged legal work finally paid off for U.S. victims of state-sponsored terrorism

IN 2003, an American private investigator slipped into Beirut to take a videotaped deposition from a Shiite militant for a sensitive civil case in U.S. federal court. The militant, identified only by his first name, Mohammed, acknowledged under oath that he had helped prepare the 10-ton truck bomb that blew up the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, killing 241 American peacekeepers. Mohammed also disclosed that several Iranian officials in Damascus, Syria, were in daily contact with the group building the truck bomb.

When the investigator returned to Washington, he testified in court behind a screen, speaking into a device that disguised his voice to protect trusted associates in Lebanon who had helped arrange the deposition. “We had some serious concern about people in Lebanon somehow being connected with [the deposition], and they would be gone”—killed—if rivals discovered their involvement, recalls the investigator, who spoke to Newsweek on strict condition of anonymity.

The PI’S secret trip to Beirut shows the lengths to which a small band of pragmatic and resourceful lawyers have gone to win judgments against Iran and other rogue states on behalf of American victims of state-sponsored terrorism. Under a controversial 1996 law that allows civil suits in U.S. courts against states that sponsor terrorism against Americans, these attorneys have already won some $12 billion in compensatory judgments, mostly against Iran. Their clients, numbering around 2,500, include the survivors and families of those killed in some of the worst overseas attacks in the past four decades. In addition to the Beirut Marine barracks bombing, the assaults include the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia and the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The lawyers also have been looking out for the victims of the Tehran, Iran, hostage crisis that began in 1979.

So far, however, the judgments have been victories only on paper. To date, only a handful of victims have received any money, largely because it is difficult to seize the assets Iran and other terrorist-sponsoring states have stashed around the world, and Iran will never recognize the judgments. Those difficulties have been compounded by the Justice Department’s reluctance to agree to the victims’ demands to be paid compensation from the billions of dollars in penalties paid by businesses and banks for violating sanctions against Iran.

But all that is about to change. Provisions tucked into a huge spending bill President Barack Obama signed in December promise to provide at least some compensation to all of the victims who’ve won judgments, some of whom have been waiting for restitution for more than 30 years.

The provisions are the result of over three

years of negotiations between the victims’ lawyers and key members of Congress. They establish for the first time a victims’ fund of $1 billion, which will be drawn from penalties paid by the Paris-based bank BNP Paribas for violating sanctions against Iran, Sudan and Cuba. There’s a possibility that another $1.9 billion in seized Iranian assets could become available to some victims from a case the Supreme Court will hear in January. The Congressional Budget Office projects an additional $1.5 billion will go into the fund over the next decade from criminal and civil fines from pending cases regarding Iran sanctions violations.

“This fund isn’t going to be able to pay out everybody’s full judgment, but the money that they get at first will be like a down payment,” says Caragh Glenn Fay, daughter and colleague of Thomas Fortune Fay, a top Washington litigator working on behalf of the victims. For example, the Tehran hostages can expect an initial payout of at least $250,000, says Steve Perles, another lawyer for victims.

“I was so grateful that Congress remembered the sacrifice,” says Alex Haas, who was 8 when his father, CIA Station Chief Kenneth Haas, was killed in the 1983 Beirut embassy bombing.