Iran rejected a US federal judge's ruling that the Islamic Republic must pay US$2.65 billion to the families of the 241 US service members killed in the 1983 bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut.
US District Judge Royce Lamberth described his ruling on Friday as the largest-ever such judgment by a US court against another country.
Iran has been blamed for supporting the militant group Hezbollah, which carried out the suicide bombing in Beirut. It was the worst terrorist act against a US target until the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
"The American judge's ruling is baseless," the official IRNA news agency on Saturday quoted government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham as saying. "Americans have taken repeated measures contrary to legal principles ... This ruling against Iran is politically motivated and the result of pressures."
Friday's ruling by the US judge allows nearly 1,000 family members and a handful of survivors to try to collect Iranian assets from various sources around the world. Finding and seizing that money will be difficult, however.
Iran has denied responsibility for the attack. It did not respond to the six-year-old lawsuit and was represented only by an empty table in the US federal courtroom.
On Saturday, Elham said a US court was not in the position to issue such a ruling.
"Some US courts, without listening to the other side's views and due to its unjustifiable and irrational links, issue verdicts against Iran that are not legally defendable," Elham was quoted by IRNA as saying.
Elham said the Iranian presidency was pursuing the case and hinted that Iranian courts were open to hearing cases against the US for harming Iranians over the decades. He did not elaborate.
The American families are backing a law in the US Congress that would make it easier for terrorism victims and their families to collect compensation money.
They were encouraged by Libya's decision to accept responsibility for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am flight over Scotland.
The country, once a pariah, agreed to compensate the families of the 270 victims in a deal that was a step toward international acceptance.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of