An Iranian-born Cypriot businessman kidnapped by American agents in 1992 on suspicion of violating sanctions against Libya has won half a billion dollars in damages against the US in a Tehran court.
Hossein Alikhani, who runs the Nicosia-based Centre for World Dialogue, a non-profit organisation that promotes dialogue and reconciliation in global conflicts, said he was very happy with the outcome of his landmark case, which received extensive coverage in an article in the influential US Christian Science Monitor yesterday.
“Finding justice in any court makes you happy,” he told the Cyprus Mail yesterday, adding that he believed he had every cent chance of obtaining his $550 million “one day”.
Alikhani was set up in a sting operation by US customs agents in 1992 after his Cyprus-based company sought $1.6 million worth of spare parts for gas generators from a Florida company, to be later shipped to Libya.
Because of the US sanctions on Libya, the American company reported the request to the authorities, which then set up a sting operation to lure Alikhani to the Bahamas. He was arrested there during an excursion aboard a private aircraft and taken to Florida where he was interrogated at various hotels, shackled to his bed for the first 30 days before being moved to a Miami prison.
After co-operating with the authorities, he was jailed for violating US sanctions against Libya, even though he was not bound by the American embargo; after pleading guilty to conspiracy in February 1993, he was sentenced to time already served and released after an intervention by the US Congress.
Alikhani subsequently tried — unsuccessfully — to file for damages in a Florida court, then two years ago decided to turn the tables on the US by using one of their own laws.
The law allows Americans who have been victims of countries listed by the State Department as sponsoring terrorism to file lawsuits against those countries in US courts. Alikhani said Terry Anderson, a hostage held in Lebanon during the 1980s, had been awarded $341 million and had already collected $80 million in compensation through this legal process, which the Iranian businessman described as a “very bad law”.
“Those who were held hostage in Lebanon are suing Iran for allegedly financing Hizbollah,” he said, adding that the damages were being paid from Iranian assets in the US, which broke diplomatic ties with Tehran in 1980.
“At some stage when ties are renewed, all this will have to be resolved, so I suggested Iran do similar cases so it could have files to match the US ones,” Alikhani told the Christian Science Monitor. “I don’t want to be a [monkey wrench] in relations between the two countries, but if Iran has to pay compensation, then so does the US.”
Alikhani’s attorney, Bruce Zagaris of Washington, told the publication that his client’s victory could set a precedent for a flood of actions against the US government in Iranian and other foreign courts. Victims of Iraqi chemical-weapons attacks, for example, could sue the US for supporting Iraq in the eight-year war against Iran in the 1980s, the paper said.
It added that Alikhani drew a distinction between his case and those of Westerners held in Lebanon by pro-Iranian groups. “My case is directly related to the US, but with the Lebanese hostages, there was no direct connection to Iran. They went for Iran, but they never sued the kidnappers, Hizbollah, or the Lebanese government.”
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
