US federal district judge Royce Lamberth has ruled that Iran should pay $314.6 million in damages to the family of Lawrence Jenco, a Catholic priest held hostage in Lebanon in 1985 to 1986, according to weekend press reports.
The ruling last week by the judge in the District of Columbia was in response to a lawsuit filed by the family of Jenco, who died in Illinois in 1996, the New York Times reported. Lamberth concluded that Jenco and his siblings had suffered because of the "depraved and uncivilized conduct of the Islamic Republic of Iran," which, he said, financed and controlled Hizbullah, the Shiite Muslim group responsible for the kidnapping.
Of the total award, $300 million would be punitive damages, and the remaining $14.6 million was compensatory damages for emotional distress and physical harm, the newspaper reported. It was the eighth time a US court has made such a ruling.
In late June, Lamberth, who was appointed to the federal court by then-president Ronald Reagan in 1987, ruled that Iran should pay $323 million in damages to another former hostage, Thomas Sutherland. Sutherland, who had been teaching at the American University in Beirut when he was kidnapped in 1985, was held hostage for six and a half years.
Congress last year passed a law, which allows the US Treasury, in such cases involving Iran or other countries deemed sponsors of terrorism, may pay out part of damages awarded, and deduct the sum from that country's impounded assets. ― (AFP, Washington)
© Agence France Presse 2001
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
