American Victims of Terrorism During Second Intifada Suing Jordan’s Arab Bank
A mother of a victim of a ‘terrorist’ attack during the Second Intifada years in the early 2000s cries as she is comforted by another relative of a terror victim as they stand beside the ‘Victims Of Terror’ memorial wall. Image by Getty Images
American victims of Hamas terror attacks during the second intifada in Israel are suing a Jordanian bank for offering benefits to terrorists.
In a trial set to begin Thursday in Brooklyn, 140 plaintiffs injured in two dozen terror attacks from 2001 to 2004 are suing Jordan’s Arab Bank for allegedly funneling money from a Saudi fund to Palestinian terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, according to the Asscoiated Press. Five thousand dollars was to go from the fund to any family of a terrorist who died attacking Israel.
The plaintiffs claim that the money transfers violate the U.S. Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows terror victims to seek compensation. Lawyers for the plaintiffs say that this is the first terrorism financing case to go to trial in the U.S. Representatives of Arab Bank, which has branches around the world, say the bank cooperates with the United States in fighting terrorism, and say it did not know it was transferring money to terrorists.
“Arab Bank has great sympathy for all victims of terrorism but is not liable for the tragic acts described by plaintiffs,” it said in a statement.
The lawsuit was first filed in 2004 and has survived a number of challenges, including the bank’s refusal to hand over records for fear of breaking Jordanian law. In 2010, a court sanctioned the bank for recalcitrance in providing evidence.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
