Chicago, IL – Judge Orders Iran to Identify U.S. Assets, Against the Advice of the Bush Administration

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    Chicago, IL – In an apparently unprecedented move, a federal judge is ordering the government of Iran to comply with the requests of terrorism victims that the Islamic nation identify of all of its real estate holdings, financial assets, and other property in America.

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    In issuing the order, Judge Blanche Manning effectively rejected the advice of the Bush administration that the court should put limits on what Iran is required to disclose about its American assets.

    “If there is a precedent for this, I’ve never seen it,” a lawyer for Iran, Thomas Corcoran Jr. of Washington, said. “That is a groundbreaking ruling, and the United States opposed it.”

    Judge Manning’s order came in a legal proceeding that has already drawn attention because the terrorism victims are seeking to seize thousands of ancient Persian artifacts in the collections of the Field Museum and the University of Chicago.

    The plaintiffs are victims of a 1997 bombing on Jerusalem’s Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall that killed five people and wounded almost 200. Hamas, which is funded and trained by Iran, claimed responsibility for the attack. In 2003, the victims won a default judgment of $251 million against Iran from a federal judge in Washington, Ricardo Urbina.

    Judge Manning said Iran could not enter the Chicago case to try to defend the artifacts and then insist on immunity when the plaintiffs sought information about the provenance of the collections or asked even broader questions about everything Iran owns in America.

    “Once Iran filed an appearance in this case in order to assert immunity from execution upon its assets, it also voluntarily obligated itself to comply with requirements imposed on all litigants, including the obligation to respond to requests for discovery,” the judge wrote.

    In November 2007, American officials filed a formal statement in the case favoring Iran’s position that it should not have to identify all its assets. “This court should exercise circumspection in light of the potential foreign policy implications of requiring broad discovery of a foreign sovereign,” a Justice Department attorney, Rupa Bhattacharyya, wrote. She said the court should handle Iran with “grace and comity” in part because strict enforcement of American discovery rules could complicate legal proceedings involving American interests in foreign courts.


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    5 Comments
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    Ploni
    Ploni
    15 years ago

    If the judgement was $251M, perhaps there is a good reason to require them to disclose $251M worth of assets, or if 3x damages might be awarded, $753M worth of assets?

    murray
    murray
    15 years ago

    Is my understanding correct?- That Bush , it appears is siding with Iran? I must be missing something!

    MDN
    MDN
    15 years ago

    What’s up with that sweetheart lawyer from washington who is defending iran?

    rebbetzin hockstein
    rebbetzin hockstein
    15 years ago

    murray says: Is my understanding correct?- That Bush , it appears is siding with Iran? I must be missing something!

    I don’t get it either, but it is not necessarily a chutzpadik thing, the judge doing something that the administration does not want, because we have something called “separation of powers”, so that not all the power is consolidated in one branch of government. if the law allows people to sue and recoup assets, then it makes sense that there has to be a disclosure of the location of the assets. Rule of law. Scary to me, that the executive branch would not support the rule of law, for what agenda/purpose, and to what end? yes, I know about judicial activism, where judges try to consolidate their power, overstep their bounds and legislate from the bench, but that does not seem to be the case here….

    Charlie Hall
    Charlie Hall
    15 years ago

    The Bush administration has been ignoring laws it doesn’t like for years. Just look at the number of “signing statements” that get attached to laws that the President signs that say that the President disagrees with the law and doesn’t plan to follow it. If he disagrees with the law, he should veto it! While I don’t know the specifics of this particular case the courts are right to intervene in such circumstances.