9/11: Clueless US Judge doesn’t Know Shiites from al-Qaeda, finds against Iran for $10 Bn.

[unhappycamper]

http://www.juancole.com/2016/03/911-clueless-us-judge-doesnt-know-shiites-from-wahhabis-finds-against-iran-for-10-bn.html

9/11: Clueless US Judge doesn’t Know Shiites from al-Qaeda, finds against Iran for $10 Bn.
By contributors | Mar. 15, 2016
TeleSur

A U.S. court last week ordered Tehran to pay US$7.5 billion to victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Iran on Monday rejected as “ridiculous” a U.S. court ruling that the Islamic Republic must pay more than US$10 billion in compensation for the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

A New York court last week ordered Tehran to pay US$7.5 billion to victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon — and US$3 billion to insurers over related claims — after ruling that Iran had failed to prove it did not help the attackers.

“This judgement is so ridiculous … more than ever before, it damages the credibility of the U.S. judicial system,” state television quoted an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson as saying.

[DetlefK]

1. "failed to prove it did not help the attackers"

This is legally a bit... odd.



While we are at it: Did Saudi-Arabia and Qatar and Afghanistan and Pakistan prove they did not aid Al-Qaeda?

EDIT: Mohammed Atta lived in Hamburg for a while. Did Germany prove it did not help the attackers?

[Depaysement]

2. None of the defendants answered the complaint

So they did not defend themselves. That may be why this happened.

[MattP]

3. Is this a Onion article?

[MattP]

4. And we paid 1.8 million for flight 655 we shot down killing 290 people for no reason at all

We shot down a civilian plan killing 290 people over their air space and didn't give them hardly any thing and wouldn't apologize

[procon]

5. This judge is a crackpot.

Even though 15 of 9/11 hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia, other articles state last year this same judge ruled that Saudi Arabia did not provide any material support to the attackers and cleared them from paying billions of dollars to the victims’ families.

Now this ill informed judge rules against Iran, a country that is mostly Shia Muslims, that he believes would disavow their faith to back Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda and supports the adherents of the radical and militant Salafi Sunni sect of Islam. For their part, Sunnis view Shia Muslims as rank heretics, apostates and not true Muslims, and the two factions have been locked in a centuries old fundamental religious feud that makes cooperation between the two impossible on multiple fronts.

If his other judicial decisions are as poorly crafted are these two, my condolences to the defendants.

[starroute]

6. Is this the endlessly running 9/11 families lawsuit?

Because that always seemed like kind of a scam, with lots of lawyers suing everybody in sight in hopes of getting in on fat pickings. They let the Saudis off, so I guess they felt they needed an alternative target.

I first became aware of these sorts of scams when I was obsessively looking into the doings of Jack Abramoff and the lawfirm of Greenberg Traurig. The "Brothers to the Rescue" case goes back to the 1990s, before Abramoff's employment there, but it (and earlier cases from the first Gulf War) are the precursors to this much larger 9/11 case.

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1998-08-14/news/9808130484_1_families-cuban-miami-lawyer

August 14, 1998

When a federal judge in December awarded $187.6 million in damages to the families of three of four men shot down over international waters by Cuban Air Force MiGs in a 1996 incident, Miami lawyer Frank Angones proclaimed: "Justice is done.''

Well, not yet.

The ruling was the first time a federal court had held a foreign nation liable to U.S. citizens for a terrorist act under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. But the decision in the Brothers to the Rescue shooting ignited a debate in Washington over how the families could collect damages from a nation that the United States does not recognize. . . .

What the families want is passage of legislation that would give their claims priority in tapping a fund of about $148 million in Cuban assets that the Treasury Department has frozen since 1962. President Clinton dipped into that fund last year and distributed $300,000 to each of the four families of the men who died in their unarmed planes.


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2005-07-10/as-the-revolving-door-turns

July 11, 2005

On the Hill, both Rudy and Shiffman were involved in issues that were creating a new and lucrative lobbying niche for Greenberg Traurig and others: claims brought by victims of war, terror, and torture against foreign governments and companies. In these cases, U.S. cooperation was key, either in pressing the POWs' case against Japanese companies or in unblocking foreign assets frozen by the U.S. Treasury.

Shiffman, a Navy veteran of the first Gulf War, worked as senior policy adviser to Senator Connie Mack (R-Fla.). There he helped draft legislation directing the Treasury Dept. to use frozen Cuban assets to satisfy $96.7 million in damages that families of three slain Cuban-Americans had won in U.S. federal court against the Castro regime. The men, members of the anti-Castro group Brothers to the Rescue, died when their small plane was shot down by Cuban jets on Feb. 24, 1996. The Clinton Administration at first declined to turn over the assets. So the families hired Miami-based Greenberg Traurig and other lobbyists to help shake the money loose.