US Federal Court Orders Tehran to Pay $180M to Washington Post Journalist – WaPo
Sputnik – 23.11.2019
Jason Rezaian, 43, the chief of The Washington Post’s Tehran bureau, was detained for over 18 months in Iran. along with his wife, who was released after two months of detention.
Washington DC federal Judge Richard Leon has ordered the government of Iran to pay Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian and his family “compensatory damages” in the amount of $180 million, according to The Washington Post.
“Holding a man hostage and torturing him to gain leverage in negotiations with the United States is outrageous, deserving of punishment, and surely in need of deterrence”, the judge wrote in a 30-page ruling.
The federal judge distributed the amount between Rezaian and his family members as $23.8 million to the journalist in compensatory damages for pain, suffering, and economic losses; $2.7 million to his brother, Ali; $2.7 million to his mother, Mary; and $150 million for the whole family in punitive damages, according to WaPo.
Rezaian’s then-newlywed wife, fellow journalist and Iranian citizen Yeganeh Salehi, was not a plaintiff in the lawsuit against Iran, although she was detained together with her husband before being released after two months.
Rezaian, who served as The Washington Post’s Tehran bureau chief, was arrested on 22 July 2014 and was charged with espionage and three other security-related crimes, including “collaborating with hostile governments” and “propaganda against the establishment”. The administration of US President Barack Obama urged Tehran many times to free the journalist, accusing Iran of violating international law.
In 2015, Rezaian was sentenced to several years in jail after being indicted on all four charges, including espionage and propaganda against the establishment.
Rezaian, along with three other Americans, was released in January 2016 under a prisoner-swap deal with the United States, in exchange for seven Iranian-US nationals serving jail time in the US.
The swap agreement also envisaged that the international criminal police group Interpol would cease prosecuting 14 other Iranian nationals.
Following the prisoner swap exchange, The Wall Street Journal alleged that the US had paid a ransom for the US nationals, allegations that were denied by the Obama administration.
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From the Archives
Israel’s military indoctrination of children
By Stephen Lendman | Al-Ahram | May 6, 2010
The modern roots of Zionism go back to its founding at the First Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland, in 1897, its programme being the “establishing for the Jewish people of a publicly and legally assured home in Eretz Yisrael”. Five decades later, this was accomplished by dispossessing indigenous Palestinians, denying them the right to their land, creating a new Jewish identity, legitimising Jews as rightful owners, and using superior military force to support the state against defenceless civilians who were no match against their powerful adversary.
Leading up to and after its war of independence, Israel stayed politically and militarily hard line, negotiating from strength, choosing confrontation over diplomacy, and naked aggression as a form of self- defence and occupation in order to seize as much of historic Palestine as possible and secure an ethnically pure Jewish state. These policies were called “Israelification [and] De-Arabisation” to preserve a “Jewish character”.
In his book, The Making of Israeli Militarism, author Uri Ben-Eliezer says writing about Israeli militarism involves “ventur(ing) into an intellectual minefield”, given Jewish history under the Nazis and the perception of Israel as a safe haven. Yet, decades of Arab- Israeli conflict have produced seven full-scale wars, two Intifadas, and many hundreds of violent incidents.
Ben-Eliezer believes that, beginning in the 1930s, militarism “was gradually legitimized within the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, then within the new state [it was] crystallized into a value, a formula, and an ideology.” Over time, it acquired a dynamic of its own, and then, during the 1948 war, it “acquired full legitimacy” and became decisive in setting policy.
Politics and militarism were wedded to create a militaristic view of reality. Thereafter, it was institutionalised to the point that “the idea of implementing a military solution to [political problems] was not only enshrined as a value in its own right, but was also considered legitimate, desirable, and indeed the best option.” … continue
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“Holding a man hostage and torturing him to gain leverage in negotiations with the United States is outrageous, deserving of punishment, and surely in need of deterrence”, the judge wrote in a 30-page ruling”.
Isn’t that what is done at Guantanamo Bay, by the USA? Isn’t that what will happen to Julian Assange when (and if) Britain hands him over to the USA, because he exposed the lies of the American(and other) Government?
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US Federal Court Orders Tehran to do something.
Right. How absurd.
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us/jew owes tehran 8 trillion
for stuxnet, sanctions, internal
interferences and various murders
and wapo owes covington catholic 250 million..
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ha ha…how do you say ‘pound sand’ in Farsi?
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I don’t know Sparrow. How? I truly would like to know how to say ‘pound sand’ in Farsi.
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Maybe this will be appealed to an international court and reduced to $1.00
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