Lurch will deliver the check after his Cuba trip. Update to this story.
Via Bloomberg
Arab Bank Plc settled a U.S. lawsuit with hundreds of terror victims who accused it of financing a wave of violence that killed or wounded Americans in Israel in the early 2000s.
The agreement avoids the damages phase of a trial that would have been a painful exercise to calculate the human cost of terrorism.
“The parties have reached an agreement to settle the litigation,” plaintiffs lawyer Michael Elsner, of the law firm Motley Rice LLC said in a statement. “The framework will be finalized over the next few months.”
The lender’s financial services were used by Hamas militants in carrying out devastating attacks against civilians during a Palestinian uprising, including suicide bombings in restaurants and public buses in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem from 2001 to 2004, a jury in Brooklyn, New York, found in September. It was the first trial of its kind in the U.S.
U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan was scheduled to begin questioning a group of potential jurors on Monday for the damages phase. Lawyers for the bank and about 300 terror victims and relatives agreed to settle instead.
Arab Bank’s lawyer, Shand Stephens, didn’t immediately return a call Friday seeking comment on the settlement.
A six-week trial last year highlighted the ways banks can play a role in funding terrorist groups and the extent to which they can be held responsible in court for monitoring customers.