Several former Iranian properties in Washington are not being used exclusively for diplomatic purposes and should therefore be allowed to be confiscated to satisfy a civil judgment stemming from a suit that alleges Iran's support of terrorism, a lawyer for a bombing victim argued today in a federal appeals court.
The lawyer, John Vail, senior litigating counsel for the Center for Constitutional Litigation in Washington, argued that the federal government's periodic rental of the property—including Iran's former embassy and the ambassador's residence—has ended the diplomatic use of the real estate. Vail argued today before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Lawyers for the estate of terror victim Marla Ann Bennett, killed in a bombing in Israel in 2002, want the properties sold to satisfy a nearly $13 million judgment against the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security. Plaintiffs lawyers in terror suits against foreign nations have long been frustrated in their attempt to enforce judgments. The property identified in the Bennett’s suit, filed in 2003 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, have been targeted unsuccessfully in writs of attachment in other suits.
Justice Department lawyers say the government is complying with international treaties in protecting the property’s diplomatic use. The State Department controls the properties and rent money has gone toward the maintenance of the buildings and land. The Iranian embassy and ambassador’s residence, both in the 3000 block of Massachusetts Avenue N.W., are vacant. A third building, on Garfield Street N.W., is occupied by five tenants who pay rent to the State Department, according to a woman who said she lives in the building.
Today’s appellate panel—Judges Merrick Garland, Thomas Griffith and Judith Rogers—examined the difference between the government’s purported use of the properties and the use of the tenants. The Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002 excludes from attachment any property that is being used “exclusively” for diplomatic purposes. But the government’s use of the properties differs from the tenant’s use, Garland said. Over the years, private tenants have rented the properties from the government.
Garland presented a hypothetical scenario in which the government rents the property for use as a movie theater. The tenants’ purpose is to show movies. Any visitor, the judge said, is there to watch a movie.
Justice Department appellate lawyer Samantha Chaifetz of the Civil Division argued that so long as the government’s purpose is diplomatic, the use of the property is irrelevant. The government, for instance, is not renting the property to pay for the health care plan. The government would violate its obligations under the Vienna Convention if plaintiffs in civil suits successfully target the property for writs of attachment, Chaifetz said.
Amir Hossein Hosseini, a representative for the Iranian permanent mission at the United Nations, said in a recent interview that the immunity of foreign property from legal proceedings in a host nation "is a basic principle of international law, the violation of which would create dangerous precedents to the detriment of a law-based international relations."
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