PARIS (EJP)---A French court has frozen 85 million dollars (around 60 million euros) belonging to the Central Bank of Iran on the basis of US court judgments against the Islamic Republic of Iran meant to compensate US victims of terrorism.
According to the New York Sun, the ruling – which went unnoticed in the French media - is one of the first in which American victims of terrorism have been able to convince a foreign court to freeze Iranian assets.
Freezing the funds is the first step in a legal process that the victims of terrorism hope will result in them gaining control of the money.
An appeals court in Paris is to review next Monday whether the funds, held at the French bank Natexis Banques Populaires and Iranian Melli, should remain frozen or be released.
The funds are frozen since the end of December.
The plaintiffs have not been able to collect on the judgments because Iran has no attachable assets in the United States.
The case is seen as a precedent for terrorism victims to hold Iran accountable in European courts.
It is also seen as a bellwether for France's stance toward Iran. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has taken a hard line against Tehran’s nuclear program.
At a recent court hearing, however, a French public prosecutor representing the justice ministry reportedly expressed support for the Iranian central bank.
Christoph Radtke, a Parisian lawyer who represents the US victims, was quoted as saying "it is extremely rare" for the justice ministry to intervene on the issue of whether a bank account ought to be frozen as part of a civil lawsuit.
The two cases involve US citizens Seth Ben Haim and Jenny Rubin, who were injured by terrorist attacks in Israel in 1995 and in 1997.
The US district court in Washington DC determined that Iran played a role in organizing attacks and supporting the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
In two judgments in 2003 and in 2006, the federal district court for the district of Columbia ordered Iran to pay around 87.5 million dollars damages and interest in favor of the plaintiffs.
Under French law, accounts held by central banks are immune to civil lawsuits because they are presumed to fulfill purely sovereign functions.
In the case of the Central Bank of Iran, however, the victims submitted evidence that it does not function like traditional central banks because it is directly controlled by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and is not even nominally independent.