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CHICAGO - A Rhode Island lawyer has pioneered a new legal front in the war on terrorism, turning to the collections of major American museums to seek compensation for victims of Middle East suicide bombers.
Among the museums and institutions being pursued by David Strachman is the University of Chicago. He wants the university to surrender a treasure trove of ancient Persian artifacts to survivors of an attack staged by Hamas, the militant group that won the recent Palestinian elections.
The request was recently sustained by a federal magistrate in Chicago.
The reasoning was as straightforward as the implications are far-reaching: Supporters of terrorism should be punished. Hamas is partially financed by Iran. Therefore, Hamas' victims should be compensated by confiscating Iranian property, making Persian artifacts in American museums, such as University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, fair game for federal marshals and a moving truck.
Should that logic hold up on appeal, it would further complicate life for an American museum world already under growing pressure to acknowledge that some artworks and artifacts got to their collections via shady circumstances. Floodgates could be opened for myriad similar lawsuits, said Joe Brennan, general counsel and vice president of Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, whose Persian collection is also at risk in the lawsuit.
"If you can impose modern standards on acquisition methods of a hundred years ago," he said, "I'm going to be in the business of litigating permanently."
The University of Chicago still has several lines of defense before having to turn over its Persian artifacts.
But behind the courtroom maneuvers lies a tangled tale, and the maneuver has put several American cultural institutions under a legal gun: University of Chicago, The Field Museum, Harvard University, the University of Michigan, the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
University of Chicago officials and their attorneys have declined to comment on the case - Jenny Rubin, et al. v. The Islamic Republic of Iran, et al. - except to express their confidence in ultimately prevailing.
"We're sympathetic with the victims of the terrorists, but the law does not allow recovery under these circumstances," said Beth Harris, University of Chicago's vice president and general counsel.
In making that argument, the university has been put into the unenviable position of defending Iran's legal rights, pleading poverty for the country's fundamentalist rulers, who aren't contesting the case. In its court papers, University of Chicago states, "Iran faces numerous `practical barriers' to (the) suit in the form of extensive defense costs."
The next round of University of Chicago's legal entanglement is scheduled for a federal court in Chicago this week.
Its origins date to Sept. 4, 1997, when three suicide bombers set off explosives studded with nails, screws and broken glass at the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall in Jerusalem, a popular tourist destination. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack, which killed five bystanders and wounded 192.
Several survivors, Americans visiting Israel at the time, filed a federal suit against Iran and Iranian officials in the District of Columbia. When the defendants didn't show up in court, the plaintiffs won by default.
Judge Ricardo Urbina found that the victims and their relatives were due $423.5 million in damages. In his opinion, Ricardo noted that Iran has a ministry for terrorism that "spends between $50,000,000 and $100,000,000 a year sponsoring terrorist activities of various organizations such as Hamas."
The decision was a victory for Strachman, the plaintiffs' lawyer. "This case is about inflicting economic damage and punishment on the terrorists," he said after winning a similar suit.
Strachman declined to comment on the current proceedings, and Daniel Miller said he and other plaintiffs have been counseled not to speak about their experience while litigation is in process. But the judge found that the bombing left Miller, who had just graduated from high school, with glass in his eye, with bolts and nuts in his ankles and unable to walk for more than short periods.
Like any other winner of a damage suit, Strachman set out to collect his clients' awards from among the losers' assets.
Strachman saw deep pockets in museums housing Iranian objects, among them University of Chicago's. Its archaeologists excavated Persepolis, the fabled capital of ancient Persia, between the two World Wars. Among the collections of the university's Oriental Institute are thousands of clay fragments with cuneiform writing, priceless records of a vanished civilization.
When a process server showed up at University of Chicago, university officials didn't deny having Iranian property. "These antiquities are undeniably owned by Iran," University of Chicago said in court papers. But the university's lawyers invoked a legal principle known as sovereign immunity, which holds that governments can't be hauled into court like the rest of us. Though Iran hadn't asserted that right, the university wanted to do so for the government.
"You can sue the sovereign nation, you can get a judgment, but you can't collect it against any of their property unless they agree, right?" Magistrate Martin Ashman asked during a hearing last November at the Dirksen Federal Building in Chicago.
He subsequently answered his own question by rejecting the university's argument in a decision rendered in December. It is under appeal.
The United States has sided with the museums, though it insists it's not "defending Iran's behavior."
Strachman's case against Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is working its way through another federal court. Officials at those institutions declined to comment, except to express sympathy for the terrorists' victims.
In parallel proceedings against the Field Museum, both sides have exhibited fancier legal footwork. The museum has ancient Persian artifacts, known as the Herzfeld Collection because they were purchased in 1945 from Ernst Herzfeld, the University of Chicago archaeologist who excavated Persepolis. Strachman alleges Herzfeld doubled as a dealer in stolen and smuggled antiquities. If the museum's artifacts were among his loot, then they really belong to Iran - and thus his clients have a claim to them, Strachman argues.
Thomas Cunningham, the Field Museum's lawyer, pooh-poohs that theory.
Against University of Chicago, Strachman argued that someone else can't argue Iran's rights in court, but in the case of the Field Museum, he has done just that
"We take the position that the plaintiffs don't have standing to bring a claim of Iran's right to the property," Cunningham said. "Only Iran can."
Like others involved, he predicts that the story has many chapters to come.
"There'll be a lot more technical stuff before we get to the meat of it," Cunningham said. "The juicy part, the public loves."
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(c) 2006, Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.
