Victims of Iran terror attacks take case to Supreme Court

WASHINGTON - USA TODAY January 13, 2016 - The deadliest act of terrorism against American citizens prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks will come back to life Wednesday inside the Supreme Court, with about $2 billion hanging in the balance.
The justices will hear arguments that more than 1,000 victims of Iranian-sponsored terrorism and surviving family members should win access to frozen assets of Iran’s central bank held in a Citibank account in New York.
Among those who have waged a nearly 15-year legal battle for compensation are relatives of 173 of the 241 service members killed in the 1983 bombing of a Marine Corps barracks in Beirut. It was carried out by the terrorist group Hezbollah, but federal courts in the United States held Iran responsible.
In the years since, Congress and President Obama have entered the battle in an effort to get Iran to pay up — and that’s part of the problem. Lawyers for Bank Markazi, Iran’s central bank, say a law passed by Congress in 2012 allowing the frozen assets to be seized violates the separation of powers between the legislative and judicial branches of government.
'Article I empowers Congress to enact laws,' the bank’s Supreme Court petition says. 'A statute that purports to dictate how the judiciary must resolve a solitary pending case, with no effect beyond requiring one party to pay its adversaries, is not a ’law’ as that term is traditionally understood.'
But lawyers for 18 groups of victims, representing more than 1,000 claims for damages, argue that it’s legal for Congress to pass laws affecting ongoing litigation. The Supreme Court, they say, has upheld laws aimed at court action concerning particular bridges and forests.
The lengthy effort to collect damages from Iran involves other terrorist attacks, including the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 service members and the 2001 suicide bombing of a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem that killed a New Jersey woman and 14 others. But the Beirut bombing is its central feature.
Paul Rivers was 20 at the time. Now 53 and working for the Justice Department — which has filed a brief in support of the victims — Rivers was among a few dozen Marines who survived the attack. He spent weeks recovering from head, back and leg injuries in Germany and North Carolina.
'We have been through a lot of ups and downs,' Rivers says of the legal battle. 'You tell your story over and over again, and it hurts every time you tell it.
“I’m more concerned with the family members of my friends who have passed on, and the guys who lost arms and legs,' he says, noting that some plaintiffs have died while the case has been tied up in court. 'These parents will never see justice for their kids.'
The lead plaintiff is Deborah Peterson, whose brother, Lance Cpl. James Knipple, was killed in Beirut. She filed the wrongful-death case in 2001 — a month after the 9/11 attacks.