- A US appeals court has ruled Libya and other nations
considered state sponsors of terrorism have no immunity from lawsuits brought
by US nationals who can prove mistreatment by those regimes.
Friday's decision by a federal appeals court here upheld the 1999 Foreign
Sovereign Immunities Act, which asserts US jurisdiction over human rights
violations of US nationals by state sponsors of terrorism.
The decision came in the case of two men who sued Libya, claiming they
were tortured and held hostage after their arrest in March 1980. The appeals
court's three-judge panel unanimously rejected Libya's claim that the lawsuit
filed here in 1997 violated the US Constitution's guarantee of due process
under the Fifth Amendment.
"We hold that the Fifth Amendment poses no obstacle to the decision
of the United States government to subject Libya to personal jurisdiction
in the federal courts," the judges said.
The judges, however, also said Michael Price and Roger Frey's lawsuit failed
to show they were tortured or taken hostage, as defined in the 1999 law,
during their 105 days of imprisonment in Libya.
Price and Frey claimed they were kicked, clubbed and beaten by prison guards
and subjected to physical, mental and verbal abuse before being acquitted
on charges of spreading anti-revolutionary propaganda. The two also claim
Libyan authorities filed the charges to demonstrate support for the taking
of the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979 by militant students.
Each man seeks 20 million dollars in damages.
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