Terror victims seeking Persian relics in court

updated 5:01 a.m. ET Feb. 22, 2009

CHICAGO - The professor opens a cardboard box and gingerly picks up a few hunks of dried clay — dust-baked relics that offer a glimpse into the long-lost world of the Persian empire that spanned a continent 2,500 years ago.

Matt Stolper has spent decades studying thousands of bits of ancient history. They're like a jigsaw puzzle. A single piece offers a tantalizing clue. Together, the big picture is a scholar's dream: a window into Persepolis, the capital of the Persian empire looted and burned by Alexander the Great.

The collection — on loan for decades to the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute — is known as the Persepolis Fortification Archive. They are, to put it simply, bureaucratic records. But they also tell a story of rank and privilege, of deserters and generals, of life in what was once the largest empire on earth.

For Stolper — temporary caretaker of the tablets — these are priceless treasures.

For others, they may one day be payment for a terrible deed.

In an extraordinary battle unfolding slowly in federal court here, several survivors of a suicide bombing in Jerusalem in 1997 sued the government of Iran, accusing it of being complicit in the attack. They won a $412 million default judgment from a judge in Washington, D.C., and when their lawyer began looking for places to collect, he turned to the past.

He decided to try to seize the tablets, along with collections of Persian antiquities at the Oriental Institute and other prominent museums. The goal: Sell them, with the proceeds going to the bombing survivors.

His plan, though, has angered many scholars who see it as an attempt to ransom cultural artifacts and fear it could set a dangerous precedent.

"Imagine if the Russians laid claim to the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the original draft of the Gettysburg Address because they had a legal case against us," says Gil Stein, director of the Oriental Institute. "How would we feel?"

Legal wrangling
The fight over the Persepolis tablets spans continents and centuries and features an eclectic cast of players: Indiana Jones-type, dirt-on-their-boots archaeologists, and lawyers in pinstripes. One of the nation's most prestigious universities, and haunted survivors of a brutal attack. Iran and the United States.

Add to that President Barack Obama, who was recently asked to weigh in on the long-running dispute. A European association of scholars — the Societas Iranologica Europea — has collected hundreds of signatures asking the president to stop the tablets from being sold or confiscated.

The fight, though, is centered in the courts as both sides navigate a thicket of issues including sovereign immunity, terrorism laws, cultural exchanges, scholarly studies and the protection of antiquities.

"Historically, foreign nations have been immune from suits ... but in recent years, immunity has not just been chipped away at, but a sledgehammer has been taken to it," says Patty Gerstenblith, a research professor at DePaul University's College of Law and founding president of the Lawyers' Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation.

Much of the "chipping," she says, has been done by Congress, which passed the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act in 1976. That measure generally protects foreign countries but also provides situations in which they can be sued.

Two decades later, another law was passed to help civilians. It allows American victims of terrorism to seek restitution in U.S. courts if the attack occurred in a nation considered a state sponsor of terrorism. Winning, though, doesn't guarantee payment.

Rusty nails and poison

Bryan Mcburney / AP An Israeli policewoman escorts a shocked woman in downtown Jerusalem following a triple explosion at Jerusalem's Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall in 1997.

This case stems from a horrific September afternoon in 1997 in Jerusalem when three suicide bombers blew themselves up on the city's Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall, a crowded, open-air gathering spot.

The bombs, packed with rusty nails, screws, glass and poisons, killed five and wounded nearly 200. The Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, took responsibility. Two Hamas operatives were convicted in Israeli court.

Two groups of Americans sued. Several were critically injured: One teen, burned over 40 percent of his body, had more than 100 shrapnel wounds; a nail still pierced his skull years later. Another, just 18 at the time, was severely burned, suffered permanent hearing loss and breathing and walking problems. A third man had a burned cornea, a partially severed ear, leg wounds, large scars and chronic headaches.

Others sustained nerve damage, partial loss of vision and psychological trauma — one of the wounded later tried to kill himself.

"These were absolutely life-changing injuries," says David Strachman, the lawyer for the bombing victims. "The problem with terrorism is (after the attack is over), it looks like you're sort of done with it. But these people have problems that are going to be with them for years and years."

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