Asia

Home page

Asia

Israeli attorney wins 338 mln USD case against Syria over kidnapped Americans

19 December 2012 21:19 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. A Tel-Aviv-based law firm said Wednesday it won a landmark case against the Syrian government over Damascus' support for the Terrorist Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) in a 1991 kidnapping of a group of U.S. biblical archeologists leading an excavation in Turkey, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

"This is really a groundbreaking ruling," said a spokesman for the Shurat Hadin Law Center, speaking with Xinhua Wednesday.

The plaintiffs charged that the Syrian government allowed the PKK terrorists to operate from their territory, and provided the militants with financial support and training.

The spokesman said the verdict did not end the case, "...as we did in other rulings, we're going to enforce it; we're going after Syrian assets, Syrian bank accounts, businesses, so that we can freeze them, (and) collect on them."

"So far, we've been able to freeze over 600 million U.S. dollars," he noted.

The group's director, attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, together with attorney Robert Tolchin of New York, headed up the team backing the two American families who were plaintiffs.

"Here we have an Israeli civil rights organization, here in Tel Aviv, that operates all over the world. We have now been able to give tools to terror victims, who were not even Israeli nor Jewish -- these are Christian terror victims that were kidnapped and held for over 20 days, until they were able to escape," the spokesman said of the hostages who had been on a trek to find the exact location of the biblical Noah's Ark, on Mt. Ararat.

"The news we received today of a successful ruling against Syria for their support of the PKK during the time of our 1991 kidnapping in Turkey was extremely exciting," said Marvin Wilson, one of the former hostages.

After 12 years of anticipating that justice would be served, I hope this ruling will serve notice and be a deterrent to others that there is a penalty for complicity in taking American citizens as hostages..."

Mary Nell Lee, wife of another hostage, the late Ronald Wyatt, said although the court's ruling "cannot erase the memories of the event, it can provide each person a sense of justice. Hopefully, it will have an effect on the countries involved in supporting terrorist organizations and help them learn that they cannot get away with such horrendous behavior."