Mohammadi v. Islamic Republic of Iran

Plaintiffs, three Iranian émigré siblings and the estate of their deceased brother, sought recovery for imprisonment, torture, and an extrajudicial killing that they allegedly suffered at the hands of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1999, as leaders in the Iranian pro-democracy movement.The three surviving siblings live in the United States. The district court dismissed the complaint, finding that it lacked subject-matter jurisdiction, principally because of defendants’ foreign sovereign immunity under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, 28 U.S.C. 1602. The court rejected plaintiffs’ reliance on the Act’s terrorism exception, for “torture” or “extrajudicial killing” where the victim was a “national of the United States” at the time of those acts. The D.C. Circuit affirmed. The Alien Tort Statute, 28 U.S.C. 1350, does not confer any waiver of foreign sovereign immunity. View "Mohammadi v. Islamic Republic of Iran" on Justia Law