While this sounds like a complicated litigation, the issues at stake here are not difficult to comprehend. At issue is whether the United States will ignore the standards it has applied to other terror-related cases as well as its past stands on foreign bank secrecy rules in order to help get a bank owned by friendly Arabs off the hook for their role in funding the murder of American citizens… Despite the Arab Bank’s pleas of innocence, the facts of their funding of Hamas are not in dispute. But, as the Times notes, Secretary of State John Kerry doesn’t want to upset either Jordan or the Saudis any more than they have already been by Obama administration policies that have strengthened Iran at their expense. What he wants is for the U.S. government to plead diplomatic necessity to the courts and tie up the plaintiffs in circles… If President Obama’s solicitor general does what the State Department is asking him to do, it will mean the nation is not only turning its back on American victims of Hamas terrorism. It will also show that the administration’s much ballyhooed toughness on terror doesn’t apply to its efforts to bring supporters of Palestinian murderers to justice… [“State Dept. Sides with Hamas Funders“, Commentary, April 2, 2014]
A US law commentary publication quotes one of the counsel for the plaintiffs:
“What we want the government to do is permit the court case to proceed the way every other case proceeds in U.S. courts. That’s really in a nutshell what we’d like to do.”
Subject to what the Supreme Court says, the trial is set to get started in August 2014.
Visit This Ongoing War. / Frimet and Arnold Roth
