Victims of Iranian-sponsored terror attacks are using a new legal tactic to win justice, and fight back: seizing Iranian domain names through U.S. courts. The sixty victims, who are collectively owed $1.2 billion in damages by terror-sponsoring countries, filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday in Washington, D.C. against the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), seeking seizure of Iranian domain names as assets.
The victims’ attorney, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, is the founder of Shurat HaDin, an Israel-based organization that uses private legal action to retaliate against terror groups and their sponsors when western governments cannot or will not do so.
Darshan-Leitner told the New York Post this week: “This is the first time that terror victims have moved to seize the domain names, IPs and Internet licenses of terrorism-sponsoring states like Iran….The Iranians must be shown that there is a steep price to be paid for their sponsorship of terrorism. In business and legal terms it is quite simple–we are owed money, and these assets are currency worth money.”
The victims and their families include Americans who were injured or killed in Iranian-backed terror attacks in Israel. Though some legal experts were skeptical of the success of the lawsuits, Darshan-Leitner has surprised in the past.
The lawsuit also highlights the potential strategic importance of U.S. control over Internet domain names, which the Obama administration wants to cede to the international community, partly as a form of political recompense for National Security Agency spying on foreign leaders. Without U.S. control, the U.S. courts would not have much hope for offering an avenue of recourse or recompense to American terror victims.
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