On April 27, 2011, a U.S. District Court in Dallas, Texas ruled that the victims of a terror attack, which took place in September, 1997 on Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem, can seize assets frozen by the U.S. Department of Justice.[1] The Court held that, pursuant to article 201 of the 2002 Terrorism Risk Insurance Act, the victims' rights to compensation superseded the United States' right to confiscate the money in question.
On September 4, 1997, three coordinated suicide attacks took place at a pedestrian mall in Jerusalem, resulting in the deaths of five people and the wounding of 181. One of the casualties and several of the wounded were U.S. citizens. In 2002, the families of the victims filed a lawsuit in a federal court in Washington, D.C. against both the government of Iran and Hamas. Two years later, on September 27, 2004, after Hamas refused to defend the civil action, a $214.5 million judgment was entered against Hamas, on behalf of the families.
On July 26, 2004, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed an indictment against the Holy Land Foundation (HLF), a Texas-based Palestinian charity. The U.S. alleged that HLF was the financial arm of Hamas in the United States. Accordingly, all of the HLF’s bank accounts were frozen by the DOJ. At the same time, the victims’ families filed execution proceedings with regard to all of HLF's bank accounts (in New York, New Jersey, South Carolina, Illinois, and Washington), in order to satisfy, in part, their judgment against Hamas. The DOJ, however, filed a restraining order against the families in order to prevent them from collecting the confiscated money.
The victims’ families appealed the restraining order before a federal court. Their claim relied on article 201 of the 2002 Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA), which provides that when a person has obtained a judgment against a terrorist organization, the confiscated money of that organization "shall be subject to execution or attachment in aid of execution in order to satisfy such judgment to the extent of any compensatory damages for which such terrorist party has been adjudged liable."[2]
The Court held that the TRIA legislation is intended to override any immunity from attachment that the blocked assets of the terrorist organization might otherwise have enjoyed, thereby making the funds available and accessible to the victims.