Lawsuit Seeks Billions Against Arab Bank
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Two lawyers who set in motion a huge lawsuit against Saudi defendants on behalf of September 11 victims said yesterday they are seeking billions of dollars in damages in a new suit against Jordan-based Arab Bank, which they accuse of financing and encouraging Palestinian Arab terrorist attacks.
Representing more than 700 victims of Palestinian terror attacks, Allan Gerson and Ronald Motley filed the latest in a series of civil actions against the bank for its alleged ties to Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups that in all have murdered hundreds of Israelis in the four-year intifada.
“Today, we are striking back nonviolently with the most powerful weapon we have, the U.S. courts,” Iris Almog Schwartz, a plaintiff in the case, said. She lost her mother, father, brother, and two nephews when a suicide bomber blew himself up October 4, 2003, in a restaurant at Haifa.
Mr. Motley, lead attorney in the September 11 lawsuit that is pending, and Mr. Gerson, who sued Libya for its role in the Pan Am 103 bombing and is co-counsel in the September 11 case, allege that Arab Bank served as a “paymaster” to families of suicide bombers and terrorist-operated charitable committees.
Mr. Motley, a high-powered attorney from South Carolina who waged successful lawsuits against tobacco companies, said Arab Bank actively helped two Saudi groups, the Popular Committee for Assisting the Palestinian Mujahideen and the Saudi Committee for Aid to the Al-Quds Intifada, transfer money to families of terrorists.
The bank operates in 25 countries, with a branch in New York on 520 Madison Ave. That branch, the suit alleges, was central to the financing, because it converted Saudi riyals to American dollars, through a special “Account 98.” The dollars could then be routed back through local branches to support the terrorists.
“The individual terrorist knew that if he committed a suicide operation, his family would be supported by funds held in their names by the Arab Bank,” the suit, filed in federal court at Brooklyn, says.
A lawyer for the bank, Kevin Walsh, responded to the 10-count lawsuit in a statement.
“The accusations being brought against the Bank, as we understand them, are entirely false. The Bank has never and would never support terrorist organizations in any way,” he said. “The Bank in due course will defend itself vigorously.”
The suit is the third against Arab Bank alleging terrorist ties.
Last week, a group of more than 100 victims and relatives launched a suit against the bank charging it with similar crimes.
The new litigation also follows a verdict December 9 in federal court at Chicago against charities accused of financing Hamas, in a lawsuit brought by the parents of murdered 17-year-old David Boim.
The most recent lawsuit differs in the enormity of damages it demands from the bank, its high number of plaintiffs, and in its legal basis.
Because the vast majority of plaintiffs in the case are not American citizens, the attorneys are suing under a 215-year-old law signed by George Washington, the Alien Tort Claims Act, which authorizes “a civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.”
Human-rights groups, which have increasingly used the law to launch lawsuits, value it as a way to bring to justice foreign abusers of human rights. Contemporary critics of the law say it could threaten American foreign-policy interests and hurt American businesses by allowing foreigners to sue them in American courts.
The American plaintiffs in the case are suing under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1990, which was used in the Boim lawsuit, the September 11 lawsuit, and a suit filed in 2000 on behalf of families of victims Yaron and Efrat Ungar against Palestinian terrorist groups.
Mr. Motley, speaking to reporters yesterday, said the plaintiffs in the latest suit are seeking “billions” of dollars from the bank, but he did not specify a sum. He said he was seeking not to bankrupt the bank but to stop it from supporting a “genocidal” war against the Jewish state.
Israeli police and security forces collected evidence against the bank when they raided branches in Ramallah in February and seized millions of dollars, in an operation the government said was mounted to curb the bank’s alleged financing of terrorism. Mr. Motley has spent large sums of money retrieving some of that evidence, including documents that were displayed at yesterday’s press conference.
Founded in 1930 and listed on the Amman Stock Exchange, Arab Bank has $24.5 billion in assets and $18 billion in customer assets. It is one of the largest banks in the Middle East. The bank, which expanded greatly in the region after the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993, has 20 branches in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and two branches in Jerusalem, according to its Web site.
The bank’s lawyer, Mr. Walsh, is with the firm of Winston & Strawn in New York City. Mr. Motley is with Motley Rice LLC of Mt. Pleasant, S.C. Mr. Gerson is a sole practitioner based at Washington, D.C.