Iran must use frozen funds to pay terror victims: US court

By Kasim Ileri

WASHINGTON

The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that Iran’s central bank must pay more than $2 billion in compensation from frozen U.S. funds to families of victims of a terrorist attack linked to Tehran.

In a 6-2 ruling, the Court decided that Congress acted appropriately when it passed legislation in 2012 that allowed the families to collect $2.6 billion in compensation from funds frozen in Iran’s central bank. The compensation for the families of 241 Marines who died in a 1983 terrorist attack in Beirut, was handed down by a federal court in 2007.

Wednesday’s case rules for the collection of $1.75 billion in bonds, alongside its accumulated interests, from an Iran central bank account at Citibank in New York.

The ruling comes atop several complaints by Iran’s central bank that U.S. lawmakers have interfered with a federal court ruling that did not specify from where the payout would come.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wrote the opinion for majority decision, said the 2012 legislation “does not transgress restraints placed on Congress and the president by the Constitution."

The plaintiffs accused Iran of providing material support to Hezbollah, an Iranian backed Shia militia group, to conduct the 1983 truck bomb attack at the Marine compound in Beirut ,as well as other attacks, including the 1996 Khobar Towers truck bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. soldiers.