Judge Says Iran Owes Victim’s Family $247 Million

In the first ruling of its kind, a federal judge here Wednesday ordered the government of Iran to pay $247.5 million in damages to the family of an American student killed in a 1995 suicide bombing in the Gaza Strip allegedly carried out by a terrorist organization bankrolled by Tehran.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth acted under the terms of a law, enacted more than a year after the bombing, that allows Americans victimized by terrorism to sue governments accused of supporting the terrorists.

“This court seeks to deter further terrorist acts against Americans who may be in Israel or elsewhere,” Lamberth said.

Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who wrote the legislation with Rep. Jim Saxton (R-N.J.), said Lamberth’s decision sends a message that “terrorist acts against American citizens will cause some pain back in the country that sponsors that kind of terrorism.”

But it was far from clear how much pain the ruling will cause Iran.

The Tehran regime refused to acknowledge the suit and is unlikely to pay the judgment.

Attorneys for the plaintiff said they will try to attach frozen Iranian assets in the United States or seize Iranian money abroad, but neither approach is certain to work.

The suit was filed by the family of Alisa Flatow, 20, of West Orange, N.J., who was killed April 9, 1995, when a suicide bomber drove an explosives-loaded van into the side of an Israeli bus in the Palestinian Authority-governed Gaza Strip.

Seven Israeli soldiers also died in the attack that the Israeli government blamed on Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian organization that is opposed to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. In a ruling based on expert testimony offered by witnesses for the plaintiffs, Lamberth said that Islamic Jihad was responsible for the attack and that the Iranian government regularly finances that movement and other terrorist groups.

The conclusion echoes the State Department’s annual terrorism report, which has long accused Iran of providing political and financial support to Islamic Jihad and other terrorist organizations.

The Iranian government was not represented at the legal proceeding, so it was not required to answer the charges. Tehran has long denied supporting terrorism, although it boasts of its backing for groups it calls “freedom fighters.”

The Lautenberg-Saxton Act is another effort to extend the reach of U.S. law around the world.

However, unlike the law imposing economic penalties on governments or corporations for doing business with Iran or Libya, for instance, the measure has produced relatively little protest from foreign governments, probably because they assume they simply can refuse to pay judgments awarded under it.

Wednesday’s ruling could damage the halting gestures toward rapprochement that have been made by both Iran and the United States since the election last year of Mohammad Khatami as president of the Islamic republic.

Khatami and President Clinton have said they are ready to consider warmer relations between the two governments.

“Our policy doesn’t get affected by court judgments,” State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said. “We believe the best way to resolve the differences we have with the Iranian government . . . is through direct dialogue.”

At the same time, Rubin said, the court’s decision linking Iran to terrorism came as no surprise.

“We have long said that the support by Iran for terrorist groups like the one that apparently committed this act is a major problem for us,” he said. “We believe that it is a fact . . . that Iran has in the past provided financial and other support for organizations like [Islamic] Jihad that have carried out violent acts of terrorism.”

The case was the first one decided under the Lautenberg-Saxton legislation, but attorneys said the law may be invoked in a suit against the Libyan government for the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.

The U.S. government froze Iranian assets valued at $12 billion in 1979 after the overthrow of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and the taking of hostages by Iran. But only about $20 million of those assets remain under U.S. control.