09-Apr-15: Another decision against Jordan's Arab Bank in Anti-Terrorism Act law case

Arab Bank premises in the financial district of downtown Amman,
Jordan [Image Source]

Another court decision (text here) was handed down Wednesday in the long-running Anti-Terrorism Act litigation in New York known as Courtney Linde et al -v- Arab Bank PLC. 

It's a major legal event in which the Jordan-based bank, which refers to itself as "the largest global Arab banking network", is being sued by multiple plaintiffs for giving support to the terrorists of Hamas. Those plaintiffs are the families of more than 100 American citizens killed or injured in two dozen terror attacks that we describe below.

Most of Arab Bank Verdict Survives Defense Motions
Andrew Keshner | New York Law Journal | April 9, 2015 

A judge has refused to upset most of a jury verdict that found Arab Bank civilly liable for the material support of Hamas during the Second Intifada.
"The verdict was based on volumes of damning circumstantial evidence that the defendant knew its customers were terrorists," Eastern District Judge Brian Cogan wrote in a 94-page decision released today, denying most of the bank's bid for judgment as a matter of law.
In September, jurors decided that Arab Bank's knowing material support, in the form of financial services, was linked to 24 terror attacks in Israel carried out by Hamas. Cogan presided over the six-week trial leading up to the closely-watched verdict (NYLJ, Sept. 23, 2014).
On Wednesday, Cogan said the plaintiffs, survivors of the attacks or their relatives, failed to show Hamas' responsibility for two of the 24 attacks. Cogan rebuffed the bank's call for a new trial under the civil liability provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act. He also refused to certify an interlocutory appeal on the liability verdict.
The case is thought to be the first time a financial institution had been tried on allegations it violated the Anti-Terrorism Act's civil provisions.
In their post-verdict motions, the bank - which hotly disputes that it knowingly aided terrorists - called the jury's conclusions "a miscarriage of justice" (NYLJ, Oct. 14, 2014). A trial on the damages portion of the case, Linde v. Arab Bank, 04-CV-2799, is upcoming.

The legal case against Arab Bank, Jordan's largest financial institution, got underway in 2004. It relates to some 24 specific acts of terror alleged by the plaintiffs to have been committed by Hamas between 2001 and 2004. From September 22, 2014 onwards, the word "alleged" is less relevant since, on that date, the federal jury in the trial "found Arab Bank liable for knowingly supporting terrorism efforts connected to two dozen attacks in the Middle East, the first time a bank has ever been held liable in a civil suit under a broad antiterrorism statute" [NYTimes].

The 24 Hamas-executed terror attacks [based on OsenLaw website's listing] that have been at the heart of this legal case, involving innocent people murdered, injured, bereaved and suffering, are:

• Bombing of a gas station at Neve Yamin (near Kfar Saba) - March 28, 2001
• Bombing of the Tel Aviv Dolphinarium - June 1, 2001
• Human-bomb attack on the central Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria - August 9, 2001
• Multiple bombings at central Jerusalem's Ben Yehuda mall - December 1, 2001
• Bombing and shooting attack in Emmanuel (Samaria District) - December 12, 2001
• Shooting attack in Atzmona - March 7, 2002
• Bombing of Jerusalem's Café Moment - March 9, 2002
• Bombing of Park Hotel in Netanya on Passover night - March 27, 2002
• Bombing of the Sheffield Club, Rishon Letzion - May 7, 2002
• Bombing of Egged city bus 32A in Jerusalem, close to Pat Junction - June 18, 2002
• Bombing of Frank Sinatra Cafeteria, Hebrew University of Jerusalem - July 31, 2002
• Bombing of Dan bus 4 on Allenby Street in central Tel Aviv - September 19, 2002
• Shooting attack in Ofra on Route 60  - January 29, 2003
• Bombing of Haifa bus 37 - March 5, 2003
• Shooting attack in Kiryat Arba - March 7, 2003
• Bombing of Tel Aviv beachside Mike's Place club - April 30, 2003
• Bombing of Egged bus 6 in Jerusalem's French Hill neighbourhood - May 18, 2003
• Bombing of Egged bus 14A on Jerusalem's Jaffa Road - June 11, 2003 
• Sniper-shooting attack on a vehicle traveling on Route 60, near Ofra, north of Jerusalem - June 20, 2003 
• Bombing of Egged bus 2 in north Jerusalem - August 19, 2003
• Bombing of Jerusalem's Café Hillel (German Colony/Emek Refaim) - September 9, 2003
• Shooting attack at Tel Romeida, Hevron - October 22, 2003
• Bombing of Jerusalem Egged bus 19 very close to the Prime Minister's official residence in Rehavia - January 29, 2004 [but see below]
• Mortar attack on Neve Dekalim community in Gush Katif (Gaza Strip) - September 24, 2004 [but see below]

Judge Cogan refers in yesterday's decision to the assertion by Arab Bank's lawyers that the plaintiffs failed to prove Hamas’ responsibility for perpetrating all 24 attacks. This, he says, is "not remotely supported by the record..." other than in the case of the last two attacks in the list above: the January 29, 2004 bombing of the Jerusalem Egged bus 19, and the mortar attack on Neve Dekalim on September 24, 2004. "As to these two attacks, defendant is correct", he wrote, citing "insufficient evidence". For the purposes of this litigation, the other 22 attacks remain the responsibility of Hamas. 

The next phase of the trial is likely to get underway in July when the parties come before Judge Cogan again in a hearing to determine how much will have to be paid by Arab Bank by way of damages in three specific attacks of the 22. Until then, according to a Newsday report, Judge Cogan  

ruled that no appeal of his controversial rulings will be allowed until a trial to assess damages is complete.

10-Mar-15: The not-so-moderate Palestinian Authority and the terrorism it enables

The freshly moderate Abbas regime being
sworn in, June 2013. Abbas on the left, Ashrawi in white
[Image Source]

How moderate is Mahmoud Abbas, now well into into the eleventh year of his four year elected term as the PA's president? How moderate is his Palestinian Authority?

People - like us - who have personally experienced the agony of terrorism ripping at the fabric of their lives and familes tend to have a more black-and-white response to those questions than others do. We don't think Abbas or the PA are moderate at all. They are heart-and-soul for terrorism. And for pretending the opposite.

A good indication comes in news like this report from yesterday's Haaretz ["PA holding 50 Islamic militants, fearing terror attack will give election to Likud", March 10, 2015]

Palestinian Authority security services have arrested some 50 members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the West Bank over the last two days, acting out of apparent fear that a terror attack in the coming days would give the Israeli election to Likud... Israeli security sources said the wave of arrests, which took place in towns and villages throughout the West Bank, was ordered by PA President Mahmoud Abbas. Most of those arrested belong to Hamas, but some belong to Islamic Jihad... 

So to be clear about this: if there's a PA clamp-down on terrorists, it's temporary only, and being done for a super-pragmatic reason (i.e. "fear that a terror attack [now] would give the Israeli election to Likud...") and certainly not because they oppose terror attacks on Israelis. The photo below is a reminder of the high regard Abbas and his government have for murdering, unrepentant terrorists.

The arrests naturally cause their terror-addicted Hamas unity government 'partners' to foam and rage. The Jerusalem Post on Sunday quotes one Hamas figure saying the arrests "prove that the Palestinian Authority has no credibility", which makes some sense to us. Another, quoted in Times of Israel the same day, calls the PA's actions "an act of national betrayal" and "a knife in the back of the Palestinian people".

So what should the PA do? Clearly, if their goal is to keep their murdering, marauding, hate-filled terrorists on a national pedestal, then what they ought to be doing happens to be exactly what they are doing.

An Arabic-language news source, Firas, reporting from Ramallah [here] says:

The Ministry of Finance announced on Saturday evening its intention to pay families of martyrs and wounded 100% [of the monthly payments guaranteed under PA pro-terrorism laws] despite the financial hardship being experienced by the PA... Finance Minister Shukri Bishara agreed to the payments... which will be implemented during the next two days. [FPNP, March 7, 2015]

(The PA's foreign-funded program for financially rewarding terrorists is a subject to which we have given a lot of attention here. See for instance "28-Jul-11: Taxpayer-funded salaries to convicted Palestinian Arab terrorists. What a good idea." And "20-May-11: Rewarding the Palestinian Arab terrorists: is this being done in your name?")

A generous and sensitive soul, this Shukri Bishara. Though his government is, in the words of The Economist, "nearly broke", he's proudly and happily continuing to sign cheques for those jihad-reward payments to killers and assorted other terrorists, even advertising them via a press announcement.

But for the schleppers in the bloated ranks of the PA's under-employed civil service, a different class of treatment is on offer:

The Ministry of Financial Affairs (MFA) Wednesday announced that public servants will only receive 60% of their salaries for February... for the third month in a row" [Palestinian News and Info Agency/WAFA, March 4, 2015]

This leaves not much doubt about the PA's priorities. Terrorists, murders of Jewish children, attackers of unarmed Israeli pensioners - these go to the top of the Palestinian pecking order. And despite the economic pain to run-of-the-mill Palestinian Arabs, they stay there.

Bishara is, in some ways, the prototypical face of extremist PA "moderation". This emerges in a recent report featuring him and some previous acts of money-related trickiness and disingenuousness. Prior to becoming the PA's finance minister, he was chief executive of Arab Bank, a Jordan-based commercial giant currently struggling through ground-breaking litigation in a New York federal court. In September 2014, the jury in that case found Arab Bank liable for knowingly supporting terrorism efforts connected to two dozen attacks in the Middle East, the first time a bank has ever been held liable in a civil suit under a broad anti-terrorism statute. 

Bishara, the PA's finance minister today, played a key role in the events examined by the court, as well as in the trial:

[He] admitted that he had cut a check for thousands of dollars to a senior Hamas leader while working for the bank... In one of many instances in the case where Arab Bank's witnesses have sparred with plaintiffs' lawyers, Bishara had originally said the bank wouldn’t have anything to gain by funding terrorists, before admitting that he had cut the check for a man on the US terror blacklist... While being questioned by his own lawyers as a supporting witness, Mr. Bishara presented in much the same manner that Arab Bank Chairman Sabih Al-Masri had: a charming, western-educated finance executive with strong ties to the West whose family was touched by terrorism... Mr. Bishara asserted that banks have a vested interest in peace, not violence... [But] Under cross examination by a counsel for plaintiffs, Mark Werbner, Mr. Bishara’s tone changed from gregarious to acrimonious... The most heated exchange came when Mr. Werbner asserted that Mr. Bishara released funds from a bank account belonging to senior Hamas leader Osama Hamdan... [Jerusalem Post, September 14, 2014]

Life and litigation are, of course, two different things. But it does the heart of a victim much good to see how the expensively-suited Bishara and the smooth-tongued Hanan Ashrawi, both well-regarded in certain Western circles and - in the case of Ashrawi - acclaimed as some sort of activist for peace, were both rejected by two attentive civil juries (Bishara in the Arab Bank litigation last September; Ashrawi in the PLO/PA damages case last month).

Those two juries were called upon to decide who was lying and who ought to be believed. In both cases, press releases and media spin had not much of a role to play, but the facts did. And they spoke loudly and clearly.

21-Nov-14: Souring relations

Jordanian police exchange views with Jordanian protestors,
July 23, 2011 [Image Source]

Some more thoughts here about the land lying just to the right of ours (we wrote some pungent things about it here back in January 2013), and in whose parliament solemn tribute was paid to the human savages whose profound hatred for a different lifestyle and religion led to a massacre on Tuesday (as we wrote yesterday). Recall that they don't actually call them savages in the Jordanian parliament, preferring to say (sickeningly) martyrs and heroes. It bodes very poorly for future relations.

Here's a fresh insight how law and justice work in the Hashemite Kingdom:

Jordan on Thursday arrested the deputy head of the country's mainstream Muslim Brotherhood for critical statements... Zaki Bani Rushaid was detained shortly after a late night meeting of the Shura Council at the party's headquarters in Amman, and were told the state security prosecutor general had ordered his arrest on charges of "souring relations with a friendly country." [Source]

How does a person sour inter-state relations? In this case, evidently by authoring an opinion column, according to Al Arabiya today.

Now we have no interest, to say the least, in protecting or defending the Muslim Brotherhood or its Palestinian Arab spin-off, the unspeakably thuggish Hamas. But it does make sense to take a moment and think through the implications of a state, fully owned and controlled dynastically by one family (not at all unusual in the Arab world, of course), "a key ally of the USA and UK..." that can throw a person into jail on charges of souring relations with another country. What sort of relations does it make sense to have with people like these? What exepectations can be placed on their shoulders?

A Los Angeles Times report from June 2013 throws light on the delicate dance that the owners of Jordan play:

Since 2009, Freedom House has characterized Jordan as "not free," and traditional newspapers in the kingdom have long faced pressures. Indeed, editors of Jordan's nongovernmental papers say the palace weighs in routinely when it disapproves of stories... Given the ongoing turmoil in the region, it would be unwise to press for radical political reform in Jordan now. Indeed, the majority of Jordanians are not clamoring for such change. But rolling back the nation's already limited freedoms is not a recipe for enhanced stability. [LA Times]

A recent survey ["Jordan: The doubtful stability of a key U.S. ally", June 18, 2014,] by USAtoday added this:

"We have very few very good friends in the region," says David Schenker, an expert on Middle East politics and security... "Jordan has been an excellent friend to the United States," helping us, among other things, fight our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They've also maintained a 20-year-old peace deal with Israel, on their western border. "They do really much of what we ask of them," says Schenker... The United States has budgeted $1 billion in economic, military and counter-terrorism aid to Jordan for 2014. Total U.S. aid to Jordan since the 1950s adds up to $13.8 billion.

The Jordanians - unlike the Egyptians and the Gulf statelets - generally tolerate the Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood, allowing the free operation of several Muslim Brotherhood mouthpieces from Amman: Al Yarmouk, a satellite television channel that started up in 2011, about which its manager says "lots of Jordanians watch the channel... because it addresses all sectors of society through its variety of political, cultural and social programmes" [Aljazeera, April 7, 2013]; Assabeel, a newspaper appearing daily (according to Aljazeera) since 2008; and the Al Bosala online news agency (which may have been blocked inside Jordan by the authorities, but is accessible from here).

Also this: the Muslim Brotherhood television channel in Jordan provided a 45 minute platform for our daughter's murderer during August 2014. It can be viewed on YouTube here. The woman has been living absolutely freely in Jordan since 2011. She hosts a weekly TV program of her own from the Jordanian capital that is beamed throughout the Arabic-speaking world by satellite. And she routinely travels to and from there to speak in most parts of the Arab world. Life has been shockingly good to her.

Jordan has had a formal peace treaty with Israel since 1994. It also has a new supply contract under which $15 billion of gas will flow from Israel's Leviathan offshore field directly across the border by a new pipeline to Jordan over a 15-year period: a deal which might be about to end. Jordan’s information minister says today that if the escalation - the process by which more Palestinian Arabs murder more Israelis standing at tram stops or hitch-hike posts - continues, "all sorts of coordination and cooperation regrettably might be affected".

For instance, according to the Financial Times, the gas deal which would Jordan's dependence on natural gas from Egypt and cut its annual energy bill by some $1.4 billion. The FT said yesterday that the transaction

Man riding a donkey near Jericho [Image Source]

is facing strong opposition in the kingdom because of the intensifying Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which officials fear could delay or even scupper the deal. Jordan this month took the unprecedented step of recalling its ambassador after Israeli security forces entered Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque to subdue protesters... Mohammad al-Momani, Jordan’s information minister, said: “The peace treaty between us and the Israelis organises all sorts of bilateral relations. If the escalation continues, all sorts of co-ordination and co-operation regrettably might be affected..." Yahya Mohammad Al Saud, an MP and president of the Jordanian parliamentary committee on Palestine, said: “The Jordanian [people are] not willing to accept this agreement. I will return to riding on a donkey and heating my house with wood before I would consider taking gas from Israel.” [Financial Times]

Jordan is the home of the financial institution described in this recent Wall Street Journal profile: "Arab Bank Found Liable for Providing Assistance to Hamas"; it has a presence as well in "all the key worldwide financial centers including London, New York, Dubai, Zurich, Singapore, Geneva, Paris, Frankfurt, China, South Korea, Sydney and Hong Kong..." according to one of its websites. There's this background from American Lawyer

After two days of deliberation, a federal jury in Brooklyn found that Arab Bank knowingly processed payments for Hamas and is therefore liable for 24 acts of terrorism committed by the organization in the Middle East. The verdict came in the first-ever trial of civil claims against a bank under the Anti-Terrorism Act. The roughly 300 plaintiffs—American victims of the attacks and their families—will have a follow-on trial to determine damages.

Wikipedia says Arab Bank is "one of the largest financial institutions in the Middle East", and

"a major economic engine in Jordan and throughout the Middle East/Northern Africa... In 2005, the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency assessed a $24 million penalty against the New York Branch of Arab Bank for failing to implement an adequate anti-money laundering program to manage the risks of money laundering and terrorist financing, and violating the suspicious activity reporting requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act."

23-Sep-14: Arab Bank terror funding case raises side-issue about what the US knew and when

From the home page of a prominent
New York legal affairs website [source]

As we wrote here yesterday ["22-Sep-14: Arab Bank found liable today for knowingly supporting terrorism"], a long-running civil litigation matter reached a decision in New York on Monday with a jury finding that Arab Bank is liable to the victims of Hamas terror attacks.

Media sources are calling this the first instance of a financial institution being held civilly liable for supporting terrorism.

The Jerusalem Post sums it up today:

The Arab Bank trial took place in a federal court in Brooklyn for the last five weeks and revisited some of Hamas' worst terror attacks, including the August 2001 Sbarro suicide bombing in Jerusalem killing or wounding 130 and a range of 24 horrid terror attacks during the Second Intifada. 297 plaintiffs who were injured or are family members of those murdered in the 24 terror attacks from 1998-2004 financed via Saudi Arabia and Hezbollah’s al-Shahid Foundation sued the bank in 2004 for allowing itself to be used as a conduit for the terror funds.

Along the way, the US Supreme Court was petitioned. It and/or other appellate courts may yet be involved again if Arab Bank appeals the verdict, as its lawyers say they will. In addition, the US Departments of State, Justice and Treasury were subjected to efforts by the Kingdom of Jordan [as we wrote: "23-Apr-14: Litigation against bank accused of funding terrorism is "splitting" US government"] relating to the Arab Bank litigation.

Jordan told the US Supreme Court that Arab Bank is so crucial, that a billions dollar judgment that tanks the bank could lead to economic and political instability and devastation, possibly damaging crucial US-Jordan counter-terror cooperation. Commentators have written that if Arab Bank was held liable for being a conduit for funds which eventually reached terrorists, the precedent could shake the international banking system to its foundations as many major banks may use their size and looking the other way to dabble in such transactions. [Jerusalem Post today]

One of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs says the implications go beyond banking:

“Every bank, every company and every government in the world now has to decide whether it is willing to continue doing business with an institution proven to have knowingly supported terrorism,” [Gary M. Osen] said in a statement.[Financial Times, London, today]

Evidence put before the court by the plaintiffs showed how Arab Bank served as the conduit for a Saudi Arabian charity created in October 2000 called the Saudi Committee in Support of the Intifada Al Quds. The plaintiffs asserted that the people receiving money at the far end of that conduit were the families of Palestinian Arab human bombs and prisoners. For its part, Arab Bank does not agree with that characterization, and has said (and created a website to say it more clearly) that

"The Saudi Committee is an internationally recognized humanitarian organization sponsored by the government of Saudi Arabia. Specifically, the Saudi Committee was established to provide relief to thousands of families in need, including widows, orphans and those who were wounded, left homeless or lost wage earners..." [From "Arab Bank Facts"]

It turns out that the US government view things differently. It warned the Saudis about the Saudi Committee's true nature eleven years ago. But that fact itself was evidently not known. The Jerusalem Post article describes what happened next:

According to an unclassified U.S. State Department memorandum released after the jury [in the Arab Bank litigation] began deliberations, “In 2003, the United States provided evidence to Saudi authorities that the Saudi al Quds Intifadah Committee (“Committee”) founded in October 2000, was forwarding millions of dollars in funds to the families of Palestinians engaged in terrorist activities, including those of suicide bombers.”

“The timing of the State Department’s disclosure raises deeply troubling questions,” said Plaintiffs’ trial counsel Michael Elsner, who requested the records. “Obviously, the jury reached the same conclusion about the Saudi payments in finding Arab Bank guilty for its support of Hamas, but this last minute disclosure of this evidence six years after we requested it and hours after the jury began its deliberations is telling." 

"We don’t expect the State Department to take sides in a civil case, but by withholding critical evidence until the jury began its deliberations, the State Department continues its unfortunate pattern of siding with foreign interests against American victims of terrorism," said Elsner.

To clarify: the plaintiffs' lawyer asked the State Department in 2008 what the US government knew about what the Saudi Committee had been doing. The State Department reply took six years to arrive. And - entirely by coincidence we have to assume - the reply reached the lawyers this past Friday, just hours after the jury in the Arab Bank case had retired to consider its verdict.

There are more details about this in a Reuters piece published yesterday: "Did U.S. State Department hide document to protect Arab Bank?" Other than that, the matter appears to have gotten almost no news coverage.

If the State Department has anything to say in response about what the Jerusalem Post article or the Reuters piece say, we will write about it here. We ourselves don't have a great track record in getting them to respond to anything we ask [see for instance "14-Sep-13: Memo to Secretary of State Kerry: Your staff need some urgent guidance"; and "29-Dec-13: Tweeting with the State Department"], and we have certainly been asking.

Still, this might yet become an issue that produces a reaction. We'll be watching.

22-Sep-14: Arab Bank found liable today for knowingly supporting terrorism

A major legal decision has just been announced in the Arab Bank litigation:

Arab Bank Found Guilty of Supporting Terrorist | By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD | New York Times | SEPT. 22, 2014 

A federal jury on Monday found that Arab Bank was liable for knowingly supporting terrorist efforts that were connected to 24 attacks in the Middle East. The closely watched case, in New York City, was the first civil case brought against a bank under the Anti-Terrorism Act to go to trial, and the verdict was expected to have a broad impact on similar legal efforts to hold financial institutions responsible for wrongdoing by their clients, even if the institutions had followed banking rules. 

Arab Bank, a major Middle Eastern bank with $46 billion in assets, said that it followed compliance procedures, and that any transactions conducted on behalf of terrorists were executed in error. 

The plaintiffs in this case, about 300 victims of terrorist attacks in and around Israel, said that the attacks had been carried out by Hamas, and accused Arab Bank of supporting the organization by handling transfers and payments for Hamas members. 

The burden of proof was high: The plaintiffs had to prove that the terrorist attacks were indeed conducted by Hamas, and that the bank’s support of Hamas was the “proximate cause” of the events. In addition, the plaintiffs had to demonstrate that their injuries were “reasonably foreseeable” as a consequence of the bank’s acts. 

After 10 years of litigation and a five-week trial, the jury apparently found that the plaintiffs met the legal threshold, and ruled that the bank was liable. A separate hearing will be held to determine damages.

More details when we know. Meanwhile there's some background here ["9-Aug-14: Terrorism financing case against a bank due to go to trial this week in New York"]

9-Aug-14: Terrorism financing case against a bank due to go to trial this week in New York

The planner of the terrorist massacre at Sbarro,
now freed, living in Jordan and presenting weekly
television programs that celebrate terror. [Source video]

Exactly thirteen years ago today, on August 9, 2001, a human bomb in the service of Hamas, led by a second Hamas terrorist, a woman called Ahlam Tamimi, brought a guitar case slung across his back and filled with explosives and nails into the Sbarro restaurant at the corner of Jaffa Road and King George V Avenue in the heart of Jerusalem.

The explosion that resulted, at 2:00 pm when the pizza shop was filled with children and women, killed 15 people, leaving a 16th unconscious (she remains unconscious all these years later) and maiming some 130 others, many of them passers-by on the busy street.

Our daughter Malki was fifteen years old when she was murdered in that Hamas attack. The human bomb died, of course. The chief planner was a woman of 21 at the time. She brought the human bomb, who evidently did not know Jerusalem as well as she did, to the site that hot afternoon. She later boasted that she had selected it because of the large number of Jewish children she knew would be patronizing it at that hour on that school vacation day. She walked away a few minutes before the massive explosion, returned quickly to Ramallah and presented the evening news that night on PA Television.

Behind terrorist massacres like the one at Sbarro, there are often quite complex webs of logistics, connections and funding that tie the various perpetrators and their often-highly-placed enablers to each other.

To illustrate, the parents of the human bomb appeared on NBC News some years ago, and candidly revealed to the interviewer and the cameras that after the "heroic" deed of their dead son, they received payments from Arab Bank in ways that are laid out in an article ["Terror ties at a Middle Eastern bank?"] on the NBC News website. That NBC item includes a video clip of the parents speaking as well as a conversation between NBC's investigative reporter and a spokesperson for Arab Bank.

The human bomb's parents, as recorded in a video interview with one of the Hamas satellite television channels, described the impact on them:

They both expressed their pride and appreciation of Tamimi and how she helped their son become a Martyr: "We are proud of Ahlam Tamimi even before our son, by Allah. She fulfilled her obligation and made me proud. We thank Allah and Ahlam Tamimi, who brought him [my son] to this high level." [Palestinian Media Watch]

Now this syndicated Reuters report below, published yesterday, via the Voice of America website.

Arab Bank in US Faces Trial Over Hamas Funding

Reuters | August 08, 2014 8:05 AM

Arab Bank PLC goes on trial next week in New York over claims that it provided material support to the Palestinian group Hamas, in what one of the plaintiffs' lawyers said is the first terrorism financing case against a bank to go to trial in the United States.

Almost 300 U.S. citizens who were the victims – or their relatives – of militant attacks allegedly committed by Hamas in Israel and the Palestinian territories between 2001 and 2004 sued the Amman, Jordan-based bank in 2004. About 200 other plaintiffs in the lawsuit with claims against the bank stemming from attacks blamed on the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and other groups have not yet gone to trial.

The plaintiffs accused the bank of violating the U.S. Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows victims of U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations to seek compensation. The U.S. State Department designated Hamas a terrorist organization in 1997. Arab Bank has said it did not cause or provide material support for the attacks.

U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan, presiding over the case in Brooklyn federal court, has said the trial could last up to 60 days. Jury selection begins on Monday.

Precedent-setting case?

The bank could be liable for millions of dollars, said Gary Osen, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. He said this was the first terrorism financing case against a bank to go to trial in the United States. The trial could be a guidepost for the other plaintiffs in the case, Osen said. Meanwhile, civil terror financing cases are pending against Bank of China Ltd. and Credit Lyonnais SA in Manhattan and Brooklyn federal court.

The plaintiffs' evidence will include bank records and newspaper advertisements showing that Arab Bank maintained accounts for Hamas operatives and processed payments for the families of suicide bombers, Osen said.

Arab Bank’s defense

Arab Bank has said it will argue that of millions of transactions it processed during the period, only four processed in New York involved parties the United States had designated as terrorists, which it reported to U.S. regulators who took no action.

In a statement issued Tuesday, the bank said it “provided routine banking services in compliance with applicable counter terrorism laws and regulations, and had no intention of providing support to Hamas or any other known terrorist organization.”

In 2012, U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein, in the same Brooklyn federal court, dismissed a similar case against the bank, saying plaintiff Mati Gill could not prove it was responsible for injuries sustained in 2008 from gunshots fired from Gaza into Israel.

Daniel Alonso, a managing director with compliance consulting firm Exiger and former prosecutor, said courts apply strict standards to claims for recovery under the Anti-Terrorism Act. “It's not enough simply to have failed in your controls,” said Alonso. “The defendant must have caused injury to the victims through their actions.”

---

See also "Terror Victims to Press Claims Against Arab Bank | Suit Alleges Financial Firm Knowingly Routed Compensation Payments to Hamas Operatives", Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2014. A brief extract:

The evidence Mr. Osen [one of the plaintiff's lawyers in this week's trial] said he plans to use at trial includes records of transactions that flowed through the bank's New York branch, as well as records of bank transactions involving a Saudi charity called the Saudi Committee, which the lawsuit says paid a "comprehensive insurance benefit" of about $5,300 to families of suicide bombers. If the bank were found liable, a separate trial would determine the amount owed to victims and their families.
The bank said it provided routine services to the Palestinian charities and said it legally processed tens of thousands of automated fund transfers for the Saudi Committee, including 1,700 payments to survivors of Palestinians who died in the conflict. "Arab Bank processed the Saudi Committee transfers with the understanding that they were intended to alleviate a humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian Territories and not, as the lawsuits allege, to incentivize Palestinians to commit terrorist attacks," the bank said in an online statement.