Jury awards terror victims $218.5 million (x3) verdict against 'Palestinian Authority,' 'Palestine Liberation Organization'
The Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization were found liable on Monday by a jury in Manhattan for their role in knowingly supporting six terrorist attacks in Israel between 2002 and 2004 in which Americans were killed and injured.
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The verdict ended a decade-long legal battle to hold the Palestinian organizations responsible for the terrorist acts. And while the decision was a huge victory for the dozens of plaintiffs, it also could serve to strengthen the Israeli claim that the supposedly more moderate Palestinian forces are directly tied to terrorism.
The financial implications of the verdict for the defendants were not immediately clear. The Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas, had serious financial troubles even before Israel, as punishment for the Palestinians’ move in December to join the International Criminal Court, began withholding more than $100 million a month in tax revenue it collects on the Palestinians’ behalf.
The verdict came in the seventh week of a civil trial in which the jury had heard emotional testimony from survivors of suicide bombings and other attacks in Jerusalem, in which a total of 33 people were killed and more than 450 were injured.
“Money is oxygen for terrorism,” Kent A. Yalowitz, a lawyer for the families, said in a closing argument on Thursday, noting that the antiterrorism law “hits those who send terrorists where it hurts them most: in the wallet.”
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The defense had argued that their clients had nothing to do with the attacks. Mark J. Rochon, a defense lawyer, told the jury on Thursday that he did not want “the bad guys, the killers, the people who did this, to get away while the Palestinian Authority or the P.L.O. pay for something they did not do.”
Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the P.L.O.’s executive committee who testified for the defense, told the jury, “We tried to prevent violence from all sides.”
But citing testimony, payroll records and other documents, the plaintiffs showed that many of those involved in the planning and carrying out of the attacks had been employees of the Palestinian Authority, and that the authority had paid salaries to terrorists imprisoned in Israel and made martyr payments to the families of suicide bombers.
The 'Palestinian Authority' continues to pay 'salaries' to imprisoned terrorists, freed terrorists and the families of dead terrorists (whom they call 'martyrs') to this day. If this verdict does nothing other than to make the 'Palestinian Authority' stop that practice, that will accomplish a lot. Hopefully, the verdict will accomplish more.
And just to give you some idea of how small this country is... one of my son's study partners in yeshiva has spent the last two weeks in New York at the trial. His father HY"D (May God Avenge his blood) was murdered in one of the terror attacks that was the subject of the trial. This boy was a pre-schooler at the time.
By the way, all of the plaintiffs in the trial were US citizens.
Labels: Palestinian Authority, Palestinian terrorism, PLO, terror victim suits in US
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:48 PM
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