The U.S. Supreme Court said Thursday it will be the final arbiter in deciding whether Iran's central bank will have to pay $1.75 billion in frozen assets to victims and surviving family members of Iranian-linked terrorist attacks, reported NBC News.
The original lawsuit was brought against Iran by more than 1,300 American victims of terrorist attacks, including the 1983 bombing at a Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 service members and was blamed on the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah and the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 Air Force personnel.
They won their case, but Iran refused to pay. In 2008, the victims learned of Iranian assets at the Citibank in New York and went back to court to have those assets frozen, according to CNN.
They asked Congress to pass a law allowing them to seize the Iranian Bank Markazi's money, which Congress did in 2012, and in 2014, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Court ruled in their favor.
But now the Iranians have appealed on the grounds that Congress unconstitutionally overstepped its power upon passing the 2012 law, claiming that lawmakers essentially directed the courts to rule against Iran, which violates the separation of powers and international treaties, according to USA Today.
The justices agreed to hear the appeal from Iran's central bank despite the Department of Justice urging the Supreme Court not to take the case and let the lower court ruling stand in favor of the victims.
The Supreme Court also accepted 12 other cases for review in its new term that starts next Monday. One case is an appeal by cigarette maker R.J. Reynolds, in which the court will decide whether the European Union can pursue its lawsuit claiming that the company, together with organized crime groups, sponsored cigarette smuggling in Europe as part of a massive money-laundering scheme, reported The Associated Press.
