Appeals court upholds $156M terrorism verdict
A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld a $156 million judgment against three U.S.-based Islamic groups accused of bankrolling terrorism in a civil suit that was widely viewed as a landmark case.
In a decision written by Judge Richard A. Posner, the appeals court held that donors to charities must be held liable if those charities engage in terrorist acts.
The suit was filed in 2000 by the parents of American-born David Boim, who was a 17-year-old yeshiva student when he was killed by Hamas terrorists in a 1996 drive-by shooting at a bus stop on Israel's West Bank. The Boims' lawsuit claimed that the groups gave to Palestinian charities that ultimately helped fund terrorism.
"This is the most significant judicial opinion on liability for terrorist financing ever decided by a United States court," said Chicago attorney Stephen Landes, who represented Boim's parents in their lawsuit.
The decision upheld a lower-court judgment against the American Muslim Society, the Islamic Association for Palestine-National and the Quranic Literacy Institute.
The appeals court also sent civil allegations against a fourth charity -- the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development -- back to U.S. District Court for a decision on whether it should have to pay part of the $156 million.
But the court dropped a Chicago man, Muhammad Salah, as a defendant, saying he had been in a prisoner in an Israeli jail when the anti-terrorism law was passed, so could not have violated it.
Salah attorney Matthew J. Piers said that court's opinion was "an affirmation long overdue that the idea that he did anything that could make him legally responsible for the death of David Boim is ridiculous."
Quranic Literacy attorney John M. Beal said he was happy for Salah, a former Quranic Literacy employee.
"It's good that he got off," said Beal. But he added that his client, QLI, should have been dropped as well because "our real involvement is through his working at QLI."
Posner said making donations to charities that also engage in terrorism creates a danger and those who do so must be held liable if someone ends up getting hurt.
"If you give a loaded gun to a child you are creating a substantial risk of injury and therefore your doing so is reckless and if the child shoots someone you will be liable to the victim," Posner wrote in a 39-page opinion.
The opinion came after the entire U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals decided to take up the case, which had been bouncing through the courts for eight years.
Federal appeals courts rarely issue such so-called en banc cases but the Boim case has been closely watched as a landmark in civil law pertaining to terrorism.
A federal court jury in December 2004 ordered a $52 million judgment against the charities and Salah, and the trial judge immediately tripled the amount.
A three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit last December overturned that order, saying the Boims had not shown a close enough link between the charitable contributions and terrorist acts by Hamas. But the court last June threw out that order and called for en banc consideration of the case that has been watched by attorneys across the nation.
The Palestinian Authority in 1997 arrested two men described as Boim's attackers. One confessed and was sentenced to 10 years by a Palestinian court.
According to the Boim suit, the other was released and participated in a suicide bombing in which five civilians were killed and 192 injured.
Salah was arrested in the 1990s by Israeli police after they found almost $100,000 in cash in his East Jerusalem hotel room. He served 4ˆ½ years of his five year sentence and returned to the United States. More recently, he was sentenced to 22 months in prison for lying on a written questionnaire in the Boim lawsuit.