{"id":17658,"date":"2018-10-08T16:33:44","date_gmt":"2018-10-08T16:33:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=17658"},"modified":"2018-10-08T16:33:44","modified_gmt":"2018-10-08T16:33:44","slug":"libyan-forces-capture-fugitive-egyptian-militant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=17658","title":{"rendered":"Libyan forces capture fugitive Egyptian militant"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nTHE HAGUE: The United States accused Tehran Monday of having \u201cunclean hands\u201d as it fought an Iranian court bid to unfreeze billions of dollars earmarked by Washington for terror victims.
Washington said Iran\u2019s \u201csupport for international terrorism,\u201d including bombings and airline hijackings, should rule out its case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.
Iran dragged Washington to the UN\u2019s top court in 2016 over a US Supreme Court ruling that the $2 billion should go to victims of attacks blamed on the Islamic republic.
Iran said the case breached a 1955 \u201cTreaty of Amity\u201d between Washington and Tehran signed before Iran\u2019s Islamic revolution.
Washington tore up that treaty last week after the ICJ in a separate case ordered the United States to ease sanctions reimposed on Iran by US President Donald Trump after he pulled out of Iran\u2019s 2015 international nuclear deal.
\u201cIran comes to the court with unclean hands. Indeed, it is a remarkable show of bad faith,\u201d Richard Visek, a US State Department legal official, told the court.
\u201cThe actions at the root of this case center on Iran\u2019s support for international terrorism… Iran\u2019s bad acts include supports for terrorist bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, and airline hijackings,\u201d he said.
Visek also accused Iran\u2019s \u201cmost senior leaders\u201d of the \u201cencouragement and promotion of terrorism\u201d and \u201cviolation of nuclear non-proliferation, ballistic missile and arms trafficking obligations.\u201d
Iran\u2019s use of the 1955 treaty to lodge the case was an \u201cabuse of process,\u201d he added.
The ICJ was set up after World War II to rule on disputes between United Nations member states. Its rulings are binding but it has no power to enforce them.
At Monday\u2019s hearing, a 15-judge bench is listening to US arguments over whether the ICJ can take up the case under its strict rules governing its procedure.
The US Supreme Court ruled in April 2016 that $2 billion in Iran\u2019s frozen assets must go to American victims of terror attacks.
These included the 1983 bombing of a US Marine barracks in Beirut, in which 241 soldiers were killed, and the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia. In total, the decision affects more than 1,000 Americans.
Iran angrily accused Washington of breaking the 1955 treaty \u2014 even though it was signed at the time with the pro-US regime of the Shah \u2014 and called for the US \u201cto make full reparations to Iran for the violation of its international legal obligations.\u201d
A decision by the ICJ\u2019s judges could take weeks or even months before being made public.
But Monday\u2019s showdown risks deepening the Trump administration\u2019s rift with international justice.
Last Wednesday, Trump\u2019s national security adviser John Bolton announced the US was not only leaving the amity treaty but also quitting the international accord relating to the UN top court\u2019s jurisdiction.
That followed Iran\u2019s shock victory last week when the ICJ ruled that the US must lift sanctions against Tehran targeting humanitarian goods like food and medicine.
The step also came after the Palestinians went to the ICJ to challenge the US move of its Israel embassy to Jerusalem.
Trump last month at the United Nations virulently rejected the authority of the International Criminal Court \u2014 a separate court based in The Hague that the US is not a member of \u2014 over a probe into US forces in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE HAGUE: The United States accused Tehran Monday of having \u201cunclean hands\u201d as it fought an Iranian court bid to unfreeze billions of dollars earmarked by Washington for terror victims.Washington said Iran\u2019s \u201csupport for international terrorism,\u201d including bombings and airline hijackings, should rule out its case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":17659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}