US court rules Iran behind 1998 embassy bombings

that killed almost 200 people, mostly Kenyans and Tanzanians but a few Americans.

It is the first time Iran has been officially linked to those bombings, which had always been attributed in the past to Al-Qaeda, which boasted of having carried out the dual attacks only minutes apart but separated by hundreds of miles.

Several Kenyan and Tanzanian victims of the attacks sued Sudan and Iran, alleging they had made it possible for Al-Qaeda, a relatively unsophisticated group at the time, to carry out the car bombings. Those filing the suit were employees of the US embassies and had standing to sue under the law that has allowed dozens of “victims of terrorism” to sue governments labeled “state sponsors of terrorism” by the US State Department.

Judge John D. Bates of the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled last week that the plaintiffs had proven Iran had indeed “provided material aid and support to Al-Qaeda” to enable the bombings. Iran will be ordered to pay the plaintiffs damages, but that part of the trial has not been completed.

The judge’s decision listed over several pages the extent of Iran’s dealings with Al-Qaeda. Most of the aid was provided via Hezbollah, but the court cited numerous direct face-to-face dealings between Iranian agents and Al-Qaeda operatives.

The judge wrote: “Prior to their meetings with Iranian officials and agents, [Osama] bin Laden and Al-Qaeda did not possess the technical expertise required to carry out the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. The Iranian defendants, through Hezbollah, provided explosives training to Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda and rendered direct assistance to Al-Qaeda operatives.”

As is true in all these suits, Iran was notified it was being sued and given the opportunity to defend itself. But the Islamic Republic asserts that it cannot be sued in a US court and refuses ever to appear to mount a defense.

Judge Bates concluded that Hassan At-Turabi, a cleric who was then a senior official of Sudan, wanted to bring together all the governments and extremist groups seeking an Islamic revolution and hosted gatherings of them in the early 1990s. At these meetings, Iranian officials first met with Al-Qaeda members and began to conspire.

At some point, the judge said, “Hezbollah and Iran agreed to provide advanced training to a number of Al-Qaeda members … at Hezbollah training camps in south Lebanon.… Al-Qaeda desired to replicate Hezbollah’s 1983 Beirut Marine barracks suicide bombing, and bin Laden sought Iranian expertise to teach

Al-Qaeda operatives about how to blow up buildings. Prior to Al-Qaeda members’ training in Iran and Lebanon, Al-Qaeda had not carried out any successful large-scale bombings.”