Victims of a brutal 1997 suicide bombing in Jerusalem lost a bid to seize Iranian assets in the United States Tuesday, when the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a federal judge in Chicago improperly rejected Iran’s sovereign immunity in the case.
In 2003 the plaintiffs — Americans who were among 200 injured in the Iran-supported Hamas attack and their family members — won a $71.5 million default judgment against Iran in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Their search for assets to satisfy the judgment led them to collections of ancient Persian artifacts at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute and the city’s Field Museum of Natural History.
