Bi-Honar
07-29-2009, 01:29 AM
By: NEDRA PICKLER
Associated Press
07/28/09 3:44 PM PDT
WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Tuesday kept alive a wrongful death lawsuit against Iran over Hezbollah's assassination of the former chief of the country's armed forces 25 years ago. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington said the lower court applied the wrong law when it dismissed the claims of Gholam Oveissi's grandson, who sued Iran because it funded and directed Hezbollah's activities.
Oveissi was a four-star general and chief of Iran's armed forces until early 1979, when revolutionaries deposed the Western-backed shah and established an Islamic Republic. Oveissi fled to the United States and then to France, where he took up residence in Paris. His grandson, Amir Oveissi, was born in California but moved in with his grandfather in Paris when he was a few months old. Gholam Oveissi was an outspoken opponent of Iran's revolutionary government and was gunned down while walking on a crowded Paris street on Feb. 17, 1984.
Lebanon-based Hezbollah claimed responsibility. Oveissi's family fled Paris, eventually settling in Virginia. Amir Oveissi sued Iran in 2003 in U.S. District Court in Washington for intentional infliction of emotional distress and wrongful death. Iran did not respond or participate in the trial, and U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled in 2007 that Iran was culpable in Oveissi's assassination. But the judge dismissed Amir Oveissi's claims. Lamberth said California law should determine the claim since he was born there, and California law said Amir Oveissi didn't have the legal right to bring to bring a claim over the death of an Iranian citizen.
But the appeals court ruled that French law should apply because the assassination took place in France and both Amir and Gholam Oveissi lived there at the time. It ordered the lower court to apply French law to the case.
Associated Press
07/28/09 3:44 PM PDT
WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Tuesday kept alive a wrongful death lawsuit against Iran over Hezbollah's assassination of the former chief of the country's armed forces 25 years ago. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington said the lower court applied the wrong law when it dismissed the claims of Gholam Oveissi's grandson, who sued Iran because it funded and directed Hezbollah's activities.
Oveissi was a four-star general and chief of Iran's armed forces until early 1979, when revolutionaries deposed the Western-backed shah and established an Islamic Republic. Oveissi fled to the United States and then to France, where he took up residence in Paris. His grandson, Amir Oveissi, was born in California but moved in with his grandfather in Paris when he was a few months old. Gholam Oveissi was an outspoken opponent of Iran's revolutionary government and was gunned down while walking on a crowded Paris street on Feb. 17, 1984.
Lebanon-based Hezbollah claimed responsibility. Oveissi's family fled Paris, eventually settling in Virginia. Amir Oveissi sued Iran in 2003 in U.S. District Court in Washington for intentional infliction of emotional distress and wrongful death. Iran did not respond or participate in the trial, and U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled in 2007 that Iran was culpable in Oveissi's assassination. But the judge dismissed Amir Oveissi's claims. Lamberth said California law should determine the claim since he was born there, and California law said Amir Oveissi didn't have the legal right to bring to bring a claim over the death of an Iranian citizen.
But the appeals court ruled that French law should apply because the assassination took place in France and both Amir and Gholam Oveissi lived there at the time. It ordered the lower court to apply French law to the case.