Terrorism victims seek redress from museums

Old battle grinds on
A judge threw out the hostages’ lawsuit in 2002, and the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal in 2004. The Washington Post reported recently that the hostages have not given up and are appealing to Congress for help.

But after more than a quarter century, their progress has been meager, in large part because of diplomatic and political exigencies, and their case could be instructive for the Hamas victims.

Making the government's case in the Hamas bombings, U.S. attorney, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, now special counsel in the CIA leak investigation, said that only the foreign property of another country that is used for "commercial purposes" can be seized  for compensation and that museum artifacts don't fall into that category.

Strachman continues to maintain that many artifacts are really the property of the current Iranian government. “The [U.S.] government is making a specious argument,” he told MSNBC.com. “The State Department has consistently opposed efforts to compensate victims of terrorism, and has interfered in all these cases. ... What kind of message does that send to Iran? What does it say when our own government seems intent on hurting us?”

Strachman has had experience with such suits before. In July 2004 he won a $116 million judgment against the Palestine Liberation Organization in connection with the shooting deaths of an American couple in the West Bank in June 1996. He's still trying to collect on that judgment.

Museums keeping tabs
Museums are closely watching the antiquities lawsuits. Joseph Brennan, general counsel and vice president of Chicago's Field Museum, whose collection of Iranian antiquities may be targeted, rejected the idea that artifacts obtained in the last century are subject to current laws.

“If you can impose modern standards on acquisition methods of a hundred years ago, I'm going to be in the business of litigating permanently,” Brennan told the Chicago Tribune on March 13.

Since then, the museum has refused to comment, other than to commiserate with the victims. “We are very sympathetic,” Brennan said, “but we don’t think that this is what those laws are for.”

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