{{A federal judge in Washington U.S. has awarded a total of $957 million as compensation to victims of the 1998 US embassy bombing in Dar es Salaam.}}
Mr Thomas Bates ruled that the governments of Iran and Sudan were liable for the attack that killed or wounded 23 Tanzanians and Americans.
However, the ruling is no guarantee the specified sum will be paid to the victims any time soon — or ever, according to a report in a US law journal. “Judgments are notoriously difficult to collect in state-sponsored terrorism cases,” says the report published on Monday.
Mr Thomas Fortune Fay, an attorney representing the Tanzanian and US citizens, said on Monday that efforts would now begin to identify Iranian and Sudanese assets that could be seized to pay the damages awarded by Mr Bates.
Mr Fay had noted earlier that Sudan paid $13.4 million in damages in 2009 to the families of victims of a bomb attack in 2000 on a US destroyer docked in Aden, Yemen.
The attorney described the ruling as “a significant step in assuring that these American and Tanzanian victims of terrorism receive justice for the suffering they experienced as a result of deliberate and calculated mayhem by the governments of Sudan and Iran”.
The US embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi were hit in simultaneous bombings on August 7, 1998, killing over 200 Kenyans, 10 Tanzanians, 12 Americans and two attackers. Thousands of people were wounded.
Mr Bates entered three sets of judgments on March 28.
He awarded $488 million to 12 US victims and their family members; a total of $420 million to four Tanzanians wounded in the blast and to the estates of five Tanzanians killed in the attack; and $49 million to an additional two US citizens wounded in the explosions.
“The 1998 embassy bombings shattered the lives of all plaintiffs in this case,” Mr Bates wrote. “Reviewing their personal stories reveals that, even more than 15 years later, they each still feel the horrific effects of that awful day.
“Damages awards cannot fully compensate people whose lives have been torn apart,” the judge continued. “Instead, they offer only a helping hand. But that is the very least that these plaintiffs are owed.”
A separate case involving about 500 Kenyans affected by the Nairobi attack has dragged on in the US court system for more than a dozen years.
The attorney representing the Kenyans declared at the time of the 15th anniversary of the bombing last August that he remained “absolutely confident” of a favourable outcome.
Sudan and Iran were held liable in Mr Bates’ judgments because of the assistance their governments are alleged to have given to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network, which carried out the twin attacks.
Sudan harboured bin Laden from 1992 to 1996, a period when al Qaeda began plotting the attacks in Kenya and Tanzania.
{{NMG}}
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