Supreme Court to decide if Iran must pay for terrorist bombings

Richard Wolf | USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will have the final word on whether Iran must pay for decades-old terrorist attacks against U.S. military installations overseas.

The justices granted Iran's petition Thursday that contests whether Congress had the right in 2012 to order $1.75 billion in payments even while court action was continuing.

The original lawsuit was brought by some 1,300 Americans who were victims or surviving family members of terrorist attacks sponsored by Iran, including the 1983 bombing that killed 241 servicemen at a Marine barracks in Beirut and the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 Air Force personnel.

After Iran contested a lower court order that it compensate the victims and family members to the tune of $2.65 billion, Congress in 2012 ordered that the payments be made from an account that Iran's central Bank Markazi held in a Citibank trust account in New York, which had been frozen by U.S. sanctions.

The issue in the case is whether Congress had the right to intervene, as lower federal courts allowed. The justices agreed to hear Iran's appeal even though the Department of Justice recommended against taking the case — a decision which would have left Iran liable for the payments.

The case was one of 13 granted by the court for its 2015 term that opens on Monday and features challenges to university affirmative action policies, public employee unions and the way states draw legislative districts.

The justices also agreed to hear an appeal by cigarette maker R.J. Reynolds seeking to block U.S. court action against what European Union nations say was a money-laundering scheme that used proceeds of illegal drug sales in Europe to buy cigarettes. The case challenges the use of a federal racketeering statute overseas.

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