October 7 Victims, in a Blockbuster Suit, Take on Iran, Syria, and a Cryptocurrency Exchange

  The New York Sun   An attorney spearheading the case to hold terrorists accountable tells the Sun that he is ready to ‘fight in a New York courtroom.’

"The Wall Street Journal reported in November that cryptocurrency had “become a method of large-scale transfers between Iran” and Hamas. Iran allegedly sent Hamas $350 million last year." 

"The filing of a civil lawsuit in federal court in New York opens a new front — tort law — in the effort to hold Hamas, its patrons, and its financial front accountable for the atrocities of October 7.

"The suit seeks compensation not only from the regimes at Tehran and Damascus, but also from the crypto currency exchange Binance, which  it accuses of providing a financial platform for terrorism.  

"The case is brought by a class of plaintiffs all of whom are American citizens who have suffered from Hamas’s brutality. Two of them, Judith Raanan and her daughter Natalie, were kidnapped to Gaza on October 7, and released thereafter. Other members of the class are family members of people killed in the terrorist onslaught.  Generally, suits against foreign governments are barred in American courts, but such laws as the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the Foreign Services Immunities Act empower plaintiffs to pierce that sovereign immunity for states that are implicated in terrorism.

"The Flatow Amendment to the latter statute — an amendment named for Alisa Flatow, who was killed by Iran in 1995 and whose father pioneered in piercing sovereign immunity —  ordains that foreign states “shall be liable to a United States national … for personal injury or death caused by acts of that” state. This suit calls Iran a “co-planner” of October 7 and alleges that Syria “provided weapons and funding to Hamas.”

"The plaintiffs also allege that Syria supplied Hamas with Captagon, an amphetamine whose sale is “believed to be a financial source for terrorist groups and which was used by Hamas terrorists to promote feelings of rage, irritability, and impatience, all of which encouraged them to murder and torture their victims.” . . .