Judge holds Iran liable in ‘96 bombing

WASHINGTON – A federal judge ruled Friday that Iran is responsible for the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing and ordered that the government pay $254 million to the families of 17 Americans who died in the attack in Saudi Arabia.

Whether the families of the dead U.S. servicemen and women will ever receive that money remains in question. Iran has refused to participate in the case and insists it has no connection to the bombing. The families’ law firm plans to try to track down Iranian government assets in countries around the world and claim them to collect the damages.

Nineteen people died in June 1996 when a truck bomb blew up the tower-style dormitory for U.S. Air Force pilots and staff. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth’s ruling Friday was the first time an American court found that Iranian government agencies and senior ministers financed and directed the bombing by a militant Saudi wing of the Islamist terrorist group Hezbollah.

“The totality of the evidence at trial … firmly establishes that the Khobar Towers bombing was planned, funded, and sponsored by senior leadership in the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Lamberth wrote.

Lamberth’s decision in the lawsuit, filed in 2002 by the families of 17 victims, reverses a lower magistrate judge who said evidence linking the Iranian government to the bombing was not convincing.

Lamberth said the leading experts on Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group based in Lebanon, presented “overwhelming” evidence that the Iranian military worked with Saudi Hezbollah members to execute the attack, and the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security provided money, plans and maps to help carry out the bombing.