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Iraqi Terrorism Victims Hope to Enforce Their Judgements

The Minnesota Lawyer
Published: January 27, 2003

By Michelle Lore

Summary: Lawyers for the plaintiffs in Hill v. Republic of Iraq are currently attempting to enforce the judgments from the Iraqi government's frozen assets in the United States. The vehicle they will use is the Terrorism Risk Protection Act. The law, which confirms the right of American victims of terrorism to enforce their judgments against the frozen assets of terrorist states, was several years in the making, but was finally signed into law by President George W. Bush on Nov. 26, 2002. The plaintiffs' lawyer is Daniel Wolf, of the Washington, D.C., office of Sprenger + Lang, which also has an office in Minneapolis. Wolf hopes to finally resolve the enforcement of judgment issue in the Hill case at a hearing scheduled for today in New York City. Wolf also handles a companion case, Vine v. Republic of Iraq, which has not yet been tried. "It's been a tremendous amount of work and a long haul and we are just hopeful that it will work out," Wolf recently told Minnesota Lawyer. In 1996, in response to the Iraqi actions and other incidents involving terrorist acts over the years, Congress amended the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, 28. U.S.C. sec. 1602 et seq., to allow suit against countries that have perpetrated acts of terrorism against American citizens. The law only applies to countries that have been designated as "terrorist states" by the State Department, including Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Sudan, North Korea and Cuba. "That exception [to sovereign immunity] essentially allows for suit to be brought against terrorist states based on certain egregious violations of human rights, certain terrorist acts, including hostage taking and torture," said Wolf.