Recent decisions which hold human rights violators and also those who aid and abet them accountable and liable have significant implications. Recently the US Court of Appeals, the Second Circuit, in Khulumani vs. Barclays National Bank, reversed a lower court’s dismissal of a claim by victims of South Africa’s apartheid regime against 50 banks and institutions alleged to have actively collaborated with the Government of South Africa in maintaining the repressive and racially discriminatory apartheid system. The court declined to accept the expedient plea of the US State Department and of the South African government that adjudication of this matter should be avoided because “it risks potentially serious adverse consequences for significant interests of the United States.”

Another recent US judgment is noteworthy. There was a ghastly suicide bombing at a restaurant in Haifa on October 4, 2003, which killed 21 people. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad, working closely with Hamas, claimed credit for the bombing. Soon thereafter the suicide bombers’ family received a check from the Arab Bank for about $5,500 drawn on an account in Saudi Arabia, known as Account 98, whose sole purpose was to support Intifada-2 in its campaign of terror against the Israelis. Iris Almog, who lost her parents in the suicide bombing, and other victims filed suits in US Federal Court in New York against the Arab Bank for aiding and abetting the suicide bombing. The Arab Bank is a financial institution with its main office in Amman and 400 branches throughout the Arab world. Its only link with the US was its branch office in Manhattan, which had been converting Saudi money destined for suicide bombers into Israeli shekels. The plaintiff invoked the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789 (ATC). Their plea was (a) the Arab Bank by arranging to provide money to the families of the suicide bombers aided and abetted the suicide bombing which resulted in the death of the plaintiffs’ family members and (b) the US Courts have jurisdiction to try such suits under ATC because of egregious violation of customary international law regardless of where the act occurred and irrespective of the nationality of either the perpetrators, their abettors or the victims. In a pre-trial ruling Judge Nina Gershon accepted the plaintiffs’ plea. The ultimate outcome will be most interesting. It is hoped that it would expand and strengthen the arms of law.

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