Families of SEAL Team 6 Disaster Suing Iran for $600 Million

[Boeman]

I'm not sure how far they expect to get with this but it certainly adds an interesting dimension; especially given the timing of the "Lone Survivor" film which is due for release.

January 10, 2014

by Dan Lamothe

When insurgents shot down a CH-47D Chinook helicopter carrying Navy SEALs over Afghanistan in 2011, it spawned myriad questions about who in the U.S. military and political establishment should be held accountable. But the families of several of the 38 men killed in that mission intend to take it a step farther, suing another entity more removed from the incident: Iran. Problem is, the families don't at the moment have much in the way of direct evidence to implicate Iran in the shootdown.

The families plan to name Tehran, two of its leaders -- former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Seyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei -- and Iran's Revolutionary Guards among the defendants in a lawsuit seeking $600 million in damages. The suit, to be filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, also will name several other individuals and organizations more commonly associated with the U.S. war in Afghanistan, including the Afghan government itself, President Hamid Karzai, the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Additionally, lawyer Larry Klayman, who is representing the families, tells Foreign Policy the suit will target three Afghan military organizations: The Afghan National Security Forces, the Afghan Operational Coordination Group, and Amalyati Qeta/Qeta-e-Khas-e-Amalyati, an Afghan special operations unit.

Original FP article here

[Michael Emrys]

This seems odd to me. Why would a court in the US have jurisdiction over an incident in a foreign country? And, assuming that the families won a judgement against any of the defendants, how would they collect? It would seem that this whole ploy is designed more to cause embarrassment to the accused—to the extent that they even care—than to reap any actual damages.

Michael

[altipueri]

I would have thought the USS Vincennes was an example to examine.

Nothing like a lawyer in pursuit of a fee.

[Stalins Organ]

The US froze billions of Iranian funds after the hostage crisis - they would probably collect from those.

Also the timing may relate to reported plans to free up some of those funds as relations improve.

[costard]

Possibly an attempt to get the military to give out some information about what actually happened (information that can then be examined and cross-examined, with the threat of being found guilty of perjury and/or contempt of court for those unwilling to tell "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth".)

[Kandahari]

An interesting surmise, M. Costard. On the face of it, a futile attempt by aggrieved families/a lawyer ripping his clients/an example of US litigation getting out of hand. All of these explanations are so ridiculous as to beggar belief (not that this is a reason to think they aren't true) - surely we haven't stooped so far into idiocy? Perhaps there is indeed a suspected fault that can be only uncovered through Discovery, etc., and that this case is in essence a straw man set up to allow the US military to be poked. Given the ageing state (and overwork) of some US helicopters, how convenient would it be to blame a crash costing so many lives on enemy fire rather than systemic failure? If one was suspicious that this bird was flying beyond its limits, how else to establish that?