From BBC:
A US federal judge has ordered Iran to pay $2.65bn (£1.3bn) to the families of 241 marines killed in a 1983 bombing of their Beirut barracks.
The ruling allows nearly 1,000 family members and survivors to try to claim Iranian assets from around the world.
From BBC:
A US court has ordered Sudan to pay $8m (£4m) to the families of 17 marines who died in a suicide bomb attack on the USS Cole warship in Yemen in 2000.
Quite peculiar, that. Here I was thinking that no court - with the exception of the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court - holds jurisdiction over a foreign sovereign state. Even those rule over countries that allow them - one of the most notable exceptions being
Ira...
Afgh... Oh, I'm sorry, it was United States, after all.
Of course, having a federal court that apparently can rule over other countries, why would United States need ICJ or ICC?
Or wait! Perhaps this is merely an issue with the
geography skills of Federal Court judges. Maybe the poor chaps just haven't realized that neither Sudan or Iran are parts of United States. Could be that.
Hmmm...
I know! It's new kind of doctrine for the US military! It goes like this: "Surrender or die! We will win! And just in case we won't, we will sue you! It's illegal for you to strike back!". Yeah, that must be it.
Of course nobody will be getting money in either of the cases, but that's not the point; it's rather outrageous - if not an indication of mental illness - for a court to assume it holds such jurisdiction.Perhaps everyone else should start putting Dubya on trial for war crimes. Getting arrested and sentenced to life in prison - most civilized countries don't have death penalty, you see - upon arrival would put a damper on anyone's travel plans.