DUSHANBE, June 16, 2016, Asia-Plus — Iran has filed a formal complaint with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to recover nearly US$2 billion in assets frozen in the United States.
In its filing to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) based in The Hague on Tuesday, Tehran argues that “Iran and Iranian state-owned companies are entitled to immunity from the jurisdiction of the US courts”, the tribunal said in a statement, according to
The Sun Daily
.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in April that the assets must be turned over to American families of people killed in the 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut and other attacks blamed on Iran.
Reuters
reports that more than 1,000 plaintiffs in the case have accused Iran of providing material support to Hezbollah, the Shi”ite Islamist political and military group responsible for the 1983 truck bomb attack that killed 241 U.S. service personnel in Beirut.
They also sought compensation related to other attacks including the 1996 Khobar Towers truck bombing in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 U.S. service personnel.
After the April Supreme Court ruling, Caragh Fay, a lawyer representing the victims of the Beirut attack, said it could take from three months to a year for the funds to be dispersed to plaintiffs, according to
Reuters
.
Money will go to the estates of service members who were killed, their families and to those who survived the attacks. Payouts will range from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, Fay said.
The assets held in New York were part of the Iranian bank”s foreign currency reserves. They were traced to a Citibank account in New York held by Luxemburg-based Clearstream Banking, which acted as an intermediary for Banca UBAE, an Italian bank of which the Iranian central bank, Bank Markazi, is a customer.
To-date, US courts have “awarded total damages of over US$56 billion… against Iran in respect of its alleged involvement in various terrorist acts mainly outside the USA,” Iran says, according to the ICJ statement.
The UN court, which recently marked its 70th anniversary, will now have to decide whether it has jurisdiction to rule in the case.
Iran”s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has meanwhile warned candidates in the US presidential election against questioning the Islamic republic”s nuclear deal,
The Sun Daily
reported.
