Dozens of people who were injured or lost family members in terrorist strikes in the Middle East filed a federal lawsuit against Iran and North Korea on Wednesday, saying the two countries provided funding, weapons and training to militant groups that targeted Americans.
Nations are broadly immune from lawsuits in U.S. courts, but the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act allows those who were injured or whose family members were killed in militant strikes to seek financial damages from state sponsors of terrorism. Such lawsuits, while rare, occasionally result in multibillion-dollar judgments for victims.
The 48 plaintiffs cite reports from U.S. government agencies that say Iran and North Korea have long partnered on efforts to arm and train several designated terrorist organizations that carried out seven separate attacks on Army personnel, military contractors and U.S. civilians — starting with a deadly rocket barrage at an Iraqi air base in 2019 and ending with the Oct. 7, 2023, hostage-taking massacre in Israel.
The strikes, which also targeted Americans in Kenya and Syria, were orchestrated by al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and other proxies for Iran and North Korea that aim to drive the United States out of Middle Eastern affairs, according to the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
“How does our little family get in the middle of this stuff?” said Jocelyn Troell, one of the plaintiffs. Her husband, Stephen Troell, was fatally shot in Baghdad by a hit squad working for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), according to the Justice Department. “We were just trying to be a family that loved and brought hope to the Iraqi people.”
The Iranians assumed Stephen Troell, 45, was a spy working for Israel or the United States, U.S. officials said. He and his wife were ambushed Nov. 7, 2022, as they were driving home from the English-language institute where they both worked, according to filings in a U.S. criminal case against an IRGC captain, Mohammad Reza Nouri, who is alleged to have plotted the killing. Nouri and four others have been sentenced in Iraq to life in prison over Stephen Troell’s assassination.
Jocelyn Troell said her husband was driven by his Christian faith and a desire to help rebuild war-torn Iraq. He handled advertising and social media for the school. He took up Arabic and was soon joking with shop owners in their native tongue, she recalled. He set up a nonprofit to send space heaters, diapers and baby formula to those in need amid the war in Syria, she said.
“Stephen was trying to be that good that stops evil,” she said in an interview, recalling him as a “man of action” who was “willing to pay that price.”
The Troells went through 10 days of security training once they decided to move to a global hot spot, she said, but in retrospect they were “an easy target.” The Justice Department said the Tennessee couple were set upon by heavily armed gunmen in two cars, who had targeted Stephen Troell as retribution for the U.S. airstrike that killed a high-ranking Iranian commander, Qasem Soleimani, in 2020. Jocelyn said time seemed to slow down as she looked her husband’s shooter in the eyes; she ducked for cover under the vehicle’s dashboard and then saw her husband get shot in the chest.
Ryan R. Sparacino, an attorney for Jocelyn Troell and the other plaintiffs, said in a statement that “Iran and North Korea’s alleged collaboration within the ‘Axis of Resistance’ equipped and financed terrorist groups … [that] callously perpetrated these atrocities.” The lawsuit alleges that Virginia was one of the places from which the two countries “sourced funds, intelligence, and technologies,” including through a cigarette-smuggling operation Hezbollah used to generate revenue along the U.S. East Coast.
Attempts to reach Iran’s and North Korea’s missions to the United Nations were not successful Wednesday.
Lawsuits under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act in some cases have led courts to issue historic, albeit largely symbolic, financial awards. A federal judge in D.C. ruled that Iran bore responsibility for the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, an al-Qaeda plot that killed 17 Navy sailors and injured dozens in 2000. The court awarded victims nearly $2 billion in damages last year.
A Manhattan federal judge issued a default judgment against Iran in 2016, awarding $7.5 billion to families of victims of the 9/11 attacks and $3 billion to insurers that paid out claims stemming from the al-Qaeda attack. A similar lawsuit seeking more than $100 billion from Saudi Arabia is pending. The U.S. ally has denied involvement in the 9/11 plot and last year moved to dismiss the litigation.
If Iran and North Korea do not respond to the new allegations in the Virginia case, but a judge finds they have merit, the plaintiffs could be compensated with U.S. government funds that have been collected through sanctions and fines on businesses that deal with state sponsors of terrorism. The U.S. Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund has paid out more than $7 billion in claims since it was established by law in 2015, though a bipartisan group of lawmakers says that’s a small fraction of the total value of court-approved judgments. A bill sponsored by Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) and several House members would add staff to help manage the victims’ compensation fund, add more congressional oversight and mandate annual payouts to eligible beneficiaries.
The plaintiffs in the Virginia case, all Americans, also include seven Army service members and a civilian contractor who suffered traumatic brain injuries from a January 2020 missile attack on al-Asad Air Base in Iraq; the family of an Army soldier who was killed two months later in a rocket attack at Camp Taji in Baghdad; and the widow of a civilian Air Force contractor who died in a 2023 drone strike in Syria. A civilian couple who said they suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after “being in a sweltering bomb shelter for over 20 hours” during the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks on Israel also joined the suit.
“The anti-terrorism work that we are privileged to do allows us to give a voice to those whose lives were shattered by acts of horrific violence and to ensure the pain the victims endured is never forgotten,” said Raj Parekh, an attorney for the 48 plaintiffs and a former acting U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia who led several high-profile prosecutions of terrorists. The damages sought from Iran and North Korea would be decided at a later phase in the litigation, if a judge approves the claims, he said.
The lawsuit includes some of the same plaintiffs who have sued the cryptocurrency exchange Binance for allegedly facilitating high-dollar transactions that kept several militant groups well funded. Both cases were filed by the law firm Sparacino PLLC. Binance has denied the claims against it, adding in a court filing that it “unequivocally condemns all acts of terrorism.”
Jocelyn Troell said her motivation was to continue her husband’s legacy. Stephen Troell would want others to remember the courage and altruism that drove him to Iraq, not his tragic demise, she said.
“What can I do to change and make a difference in the world?” she said, pausing to collect herself as she recalled her husband’s final moments. “I can speak the truth, because I was there.”