ISRAELI NGO SUES TERRORISTS, TIES UP PA MONEY

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 03 TEL AVIV 002636 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/29/2017 TAGS: EFIN EAID PTER KWBG IS IR SUBJECT: ISRAELI NGO SUES TERRORISTS, TIES UP PA MONEY REF: A. JERUSALEM 1346 ¶B. TEL AVIV 1966 Classified By: DCM Luis Moreno for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d). ¶1. (S) SUMMARY: The Government of Israel (GOI) recently reached an agreement with the Palestinian Authority (PA) to release portions of withheld Palestinian customs revenue (ref A),but a substantial portion of these funds remains frozen by court order. Israeli courts are in the process of deciding whether the PA is liable for damages to victims of terrorist attacks awarded in a series of lawsuits in the United States and Israel, and have put a lien against PA funds pending further notice. On June 20, Econoff spoke with Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, Director of the Israel Law Center (ILC, or Shurat HaDin in Hebrew),the organization responsible for initiating the majority of these cases. ILC is reported to have hundreds of ongoing lawsuits in Israel, and has tried and won several high-profile cases in the United States worth approximately USD 900 million. ILC has collected only a small percentage of the awards for the plaintiffs, but the center's stated goal is to bankrupt Palestinian terrorist organizations as well as the PA, which it views as an accomplice in attacks against Israeli citizens. ILC claims to work closely with Israeli intelligence in selecting cases and collecting evidence. The center's early success has encouraged its legal team to try new cases against Iran and Syria in the United States, where the organization's legal strategy has proved most successful. END SUMMARY. -------------- Background: A Civil Rights Model -------------- ¶2. (S) ILC is a non-profit organization established in 2000 by Nitsana Darshan-Leitner and her American-born husband Avi Leitner, both attorneys. For the last ten years, the couple has used legal tools to, in their view, defend Jews in trouble around the world. Some of their activities include: a civil action against the Mossad and Jewish Agency for failing to protect Jewish Iranians accused of spying for Israel; a suit against the Egyptian Ambassador to Israel for sexual assault against an Israeli belly dancer; and advocating a pardon for Jonathan Pollard, convicted of spying on the United States for Israel. ILC is operated as a clearinghouse for lawsuits in Israel, the United States, and Europe against terrorists and terror organizations. ILC focuses on bringing civil suits, and has taken the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in Alabama as a model. The SPLC aimed to bankrupt the Klu Klux Klan and neo-Nazi groups through aggressive lawsuits. Similarly, Leitner and her colleagues seek both to promote the rights of their clients and to weaken Palestinian terror groups and the PA, which they view as complicit in terrorist activities. ¶3. (S) Leitner said that the ILC tried its first cases against the PA in Israel following the outbreak of the second intifada, resulting in the first successful lien against PA funds. There are reportedly several hundred cases of terror victims currently before Israeli courts or awaiting payment, including the 2006 decision of a Jerusalem court to award NIS 90 million (USD 22 million) to victims of a Hamas bombing. With a staff that includes several prominent American-Israeli lawyers, ILC collaborates with co-counsels in the United States to litigate cases and has won suits worth a total of nearly USD 900 million. In one example, ILC worked with Rhode Island lawyer David Strachman to win a USD 116 million judgment in what became known as the Unger Case. ILC lawyers represented the claims of the two orphaned children of American citizen Yaron Unger, who was killed in 1996 (along with his Israeli wife) in a drive-by shooting in Beit Shemesh. The terror attack was attributed to Hamas militants wearing PA uniforms, which the Rhode Island Federal Court accepted as sufficient evidence to determine the PA's liability. -------------- NGO Turns Collection Agency -------------- ¶4. (S) Since the PA does not voluntarily pay damages, ILC has resorted to third-party liens for collecting payment. After winning the Unger case in the United States, ILC appealed to Israeli courts to honor the award out of PA tax revenue. Israeli judges have responded by freezing a substantial portion of PA funds, pending a decision by Israel's Supreme Court on whether the PA is entitled to sovereign immunity. U.S. courts, in contrast, have not attributed sovereign immunity rights to the PA in relevant cases. TEL AVIV 00002636 002 OF 003 ¶5. (S) In the United States, Leitner claimed ILC has gotten U.S. courts to freeze nearly USD 300 million in assets belonging to the PA and the Palestinian Monetary Authority. Leitner said that USD 5 million of these funds have been released for payment to the plaintiffs, despite the PA arguments to the courts that the frozen funds belong to the Palestinian people and not individual terrorists, and therefore cannot be used for payment to terror victims. In the ongoing case with the Palestine Pension Fund held at Citibank, Leitner said that the PA argued that the fund belongs to PA employees for payment of pensions, but her staff has countered that the account was a slush fund belonging to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, consisting exclusively of high-risk investments and has never been used to pay pensions. -------------- Targeting "Complicit" Banks -------------- ¶6. (S) Perhaps the ILC's most prominent case is a lawsuit for USD 875 million, filed on behalf of American citizens against the Palestinian-owned Arab Bank, based in Jordan. (A separate but similar case was filed by an Israeli plaintiff, and approved by a Brooklyn Court under the Alien Tort Act.) Once again, ILC worked with co-counsels in the United States, with most of the legal preparation -- including evidence, witnesses, and experts -- coming from Israel. Leitner explained that to prove a bank complicit in terrorist financing, the plaintiff must demonstrate that it knowingly transferred funds to a group or individual intending to carry out a terrorist attack. In the case of Arab Bank, Leitner claimed bank officials knew for an extended period of time that their branches were used to transfer payments to the families of suicide bombers. ¶7. (S) Arab Bank turned ILC's tactics inside out, however, when it filed a third-party notice against its Israeli correspondent banks, Hapoalim and Discount. If approved by the courts, this legal maneuver would mean that any Arab Bank liability would be shared by its Israeli banking partners. In the Israeli financial community, this case has increased fears of the risks of doing business with Palestinian banks in general (ref B). Leitner said that she had no intention of suing Israeli companies, but did not discount the possibility that others would try to do so. ¶8. (S) Leitner said that ILC is involved in two cases against European banks -- Credit Lyonnais and National Westminster -- which she claimed have had a dramatic impact on standard banking practices. In its lawsuits, ILC makes the case that both banks were warned by the Mossad that they were servicing Islamic charities supporting terrorism, yet they continued to facilitate the business. The fact that many of the transfers were in U.S. dollars gave U.S. courts jurisdiction to try the cases. Although the lawsuits have yet to be resolved, Leitner expressed satisfaction that National Westminster now asks the Mossad whether its Islamic charity clients are "kosher." -------------- Next on the Stand: Syria and Iran -------------- ¶9. (S) Following its success in Palestinian cases, ILC has taken aim at states that support terror -- specifically Iran and Syria. ILC won cases in U.S. courts linking Iran to a number of Hamas terror attacks, including three attacks in Jerusalem in 1996 and 1997. The organization is currently suing Syria for the same bombings. Leitner said that ILC's lawyers proved in court that the bombers received financial backing and training from Iran, and have managed to collect for damages against some Iranian holdings in the United States, including a house in Texas. Leitner told Econoff that ILC and its American associates hired former Under Secretary for Economic Affairs Stuart Eisenstadt to lobby for SIPDIS the release of Iranian assets. ¶10. (S) ILC also worked with legal counsel in Rome to pursue compensation in Italian courts. Leitner and her partners filed for a lien against the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC),claiming damages be awarded against NIOC's USD 600 million in Italian bank accounts. Leitner said that the case alarmed both the Iranians and European businesspeople, who were eager to shield state-owned businesses from liability for government policies. According to Leitner, the defendants won through a technicality, claiming that they were not given adequate notice of the suit. The lien was lifted temporarily, at which time Leitner said Israeli TEL AVIV 00002636 003 OF 003 intelligence officers told ILC that the funds had been transferred to Thailand. ILC is pursuing a similar case in South Africa, but without a preemptive lien, Leitner believes the Iranians will simply transfer the funds to another country. -------------- Taking Cues From GOI Intelligence -------------- ¶11. (S) Leitner said that in many of her cases she receives evidence from GOI officials, and added that in its early years ILC took direction from the GOI on which cases to pursue. "The National Security Council (NSC) legal office saw the use of civil courts as a way to do things that they are not authorized to do," claimed Leitner. Among her contacts, Leitner listed Udi Levy at the NSC and Uzi Beshaya at the Mossad, both key Embassy contacts on anti-terrorist finance cooperation. Leitner offered a case against Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) as example of ILC's close cooperation with the GOI. After obtaining a judgment against PIJ for NIS 100 million (USD 25 million),ILC requested a lien for that amount against the Abu Akker Trading Company as a third party defendant. At the time, Abu Akker was one of the largest Palestinian importing companies, and Leitner said the Mossad provided her with the intelligence (similar to information provided to USG officials in a classified briefing) to prove that the company was funneling money to PIJ. According to Leitner, the ILC now decides its cases independently, but continues to receive evidence and witnesses from Israeli intelligence. -------------- COMMENT: Aggressive to a Fault? -------------- ¶12. (S) ILC lawyers are extremely aggressive, and boast that they "will sue anybody." While the ILC's mission dovetails with GOI objectives of putting financial pressure on Israel's adversaries, the often uncompromising approach of ILC's attorneys seems to overreach official GOI policy goals. ILC's relentless litigation has proven to be an obstacle to the GOI's releasing of all customs revenues previously withheld from the PA. A complete settling of these accounts may not be possible without dealing with the lawsuits in Israeli and U.S. courts. ********************************************* ******************** Visit Embassy Tel Aviv's Classified Website: http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/nea/telaviv You can also access this site through the State Department's Classified SIPRNET website. ********************************************* ******************** JONES