Iran orchestrated an attack against U.S. soldiers during the Iraq war, and now the families of three victims are suing the Iranian government for $200 million.
Agents from Iran-supported organizations launched a raid on U.S. headquarters in Karbala in 2007. Assailants passed a checkpoint manned by Iraqi police by pretending to be American security agents — driving black SUVs, brandishing American weapons and speaking perfect English, reports The Associated Press.
Four soldiers were taken captive and later shot while handcuffed in pairs. One victim’s family isn’t involved in the suit.
“Lt. Jacob Fritz, Specialist Johnathan Chism and Private First Class Shawn Falter were taken prisoner and then murdered in January 2007 by Iranian-backed Hezbollah agents and the Khazali network, an Iraqi militant group also funded and trained by Iran,” writes Associated Press reporter Richard Lardner.
Commanders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) even created a replica of the Karbala Provincial Joint Coordination Center to train attackers inside Iran’s borders, discovered by a U.S. spy satellite.
In September of 2008, the U.S. Department of the Treasury issue a statement designating the planners of the attack as terrorists, but little was done to hold perpetrators accountable.
Qais Khazali, a key coordinator of the Karbala operation, was imprisoned by U.S. forces but released in an apparent prisoner exchange. As of late, his Shiite militia actually benefited from U.S. airstrikes in the battle to oust the Islamic State from Tikrit.
Several hundred U.S. service members died as a direct result of Iran and its proxies during the war in Iraq, according to Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
“Iran was one of the main sponsors of terrorism and violence in Iraq during the war,” said Joscelyn. A significant amount of the violence was directed at the U.S. military, he added.
Iran-backed militias still pose a major threat to U.S. troops. Officials told Politico if nuclear negotiations collapse or if the U.S. takes a hardliner stance against the Syrian president, a long-time ally of Iran, the largest Shiite power could have its proxy forces attack American soldiers in Iraq.
Attorney Steven Perles, representing the families of the Karbala victims, has launched lawsuits against the Iranian government before. After the Flatow Ammendment was passed in 1996, denying sovereign immunity to state sponsors of terrorism, he won $27 million for the family of Alisa Flatow, killed in an Iran-planned bombing in Gaza in 1995.
Reports The Washington Post:
U.S. courts have imposed judgments against Iran in cases brought by victims of the 1983 bombing of U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, a 1995 Gaza bus bombing that killed American student Alisa Flatow and the 1998 al-Qaeda attacks against U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
U.S. victims of Iranian terrorist attacks have received restitution in the past. A tower in mid-Manhattan, once home to chains like Juicy Couture, was revealed to be secretly owned by the Iranian government in 2013. Its estimated worth between $500-$700 million, the building was seized on behalf of terrorism claimants.
The lawsuit was filed in a U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. on Monday.
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