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US Judge: Lebanon Can’t Intervene in Fakhoury’s Suit, Can’t Be Sued

FILE - Three of Amer Fakhoury's four daughters, from left, Guila, Macy and Zoya Fakhoury, gather Nov. 5, 2019, in Salem, N.H. Amer Fakhoury was a Lebanese American restaurant owner who made his first trip back to Lebanon in 2019 in nearly 20 years to see family. (AP Photo/Kathy McCormack, File)
FILE - Three of Amer Fakhoury's four daughters, from left, Guila, Macy and Zoya Fakhoury, gather Nov. 5, 2019, in Salem, N.H. Amer Fakhoury was a Lebanese American restaurant owner who made his first trip back to Lebanon in 2019 in nearly 20 years to see family. (AP Photo/Kathy McCormack, File)
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US Judge: Lebanon Can’t Intervene in Fakhoury’s Suit, Can’t Be Sued

FILE - Three of Amer Fakhoury's four daughters, from left, Guila, Macy and Zoya Fakhoury, gather Nov. 5, 2019, in Salem, N.H. Amer Fakhoury was a Lebanese American restaurant owner who made his first trip back to Lebanon in 2019 in nearly 20 years to see family. (AP Photo/Kathy McCormack, File)
FILE - Three of Amer Fakhoury's four daughters, from left, Guila, Macy and Zoya Fakhoury, gather Nov. 5, 2019, in Salem, N.H. Amer Fakhoury was a Lebanese American restaurant owner who made his first trip back to Lebanon in 2019 in nearly 20 years to see family. (AP Photo/Kathy McCormack, File)

A judge on Monday denied a family’s attempt to sue Lebanon on allegations that the country’s security agency kidnapped and tortured their family member before he died in the US, and that the agency could not intervene in the case.

Amer Fakhoury, a Lebanese American man, died in the United States in August 2020 at age 57 from stage 4 lymphoma. His family’s lawsuit, filed in Washington last year against Iran, says he developed the illness and other serious medical issues while imprisoned during a visit to Lebanon over decades-old murder and torture charges that he denied.

The family had sought to expand the lawsuit to also target Lebanon, according to The Associated Press.

Fakhoury’s detention in 2019 and release in 2020 marked another strain in relations between the United States and Lebanon, which finds itself beset by one of the world’s worst economic disasters and squeezed by tensions between Washington and Iran.

Lawyers representing Lebanon’s security agency, the General Directorate of General Security, had first asked to intervene in the Fakhoury family’s wrongful death lawsuit against Iran to have the allegations against Lebanon stricken. That request also was denied by by US District Judge John Bates in his order Monday.

The Lebanese security agency had claimed the lawsuit falsely accuses it and its director of “serious crimes of kidnapping, torture and killing at the direction or aid of alleged terrorist organizations.”

In turn, the Fakhourys’ lawyer, Robert Tolchin, had asked for permission to formally sue Lebanon.

The family’s lawsuit initially argued it was possible to sue Iran under an exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, as it has been designated as a “state sponsor of terrorism” since 1984. The suit also described Hezbollah as an “instrument” of Iran.

Tolchin had said the Fakhourys interpreted the Lebanon security agency’s request to intervene as a wavier of sovereign immunity. An attorney for the agency denied that, and the judge agreed.

Bates wrote that there is “insufficient evidence for the court to conclude” that the agency intended to waive its sovereign immunity.

Bates also wrote that the allegations about Fakhoury’s detention in Lebanon that the security agency wishes to strike “are central to this lawsuit.”

Messages seeking comment were sent to the lawyers.

Iran has yet to respond to the lawsuit.

Fakhoury’s imprisonment in Lebanon took place in September 2019, not long after he became an American citizen. Fakhoury, a restaurateur in New Hampshire, visited his home country on vacation for the first time in nearly 20 years. A week after he arrived, he was jailed and his passport was seized, his family has said.

The day before he was taken into custody, a newspaper close to the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group published a story accusing him of playing a role in the torture and killing of inmates at a prison run by an Israeli-backed Lebanese militia during Israel’s occupation of Lebanon two decades ago. Fakhoury was a member of the South Lebanon Army.

The article dubbed him the “butcher” of the Khiam Detention Center, which was notorious for human rights abuses. Fakhoury’s family said he had worked at the prison as a member of the militia, but that he was a clerk who had little contact with inmates. When Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, Fakhoury left the country like many other militia members who feared reprisals. He arrived in the US in 2001.

As early as 2018, Fakhoury had sought assurances from the US State Department and the Lebanese government that he could visit Lebanon freely. His family said he was told there were no accusations against him in Lebanon or no legal matters that might interfere with his return.

Upon his return to Lebanon, Fakhoury was held for five months before he was formally charged, his family said. By then, he had dropped more than 60 pounds, was suffering from lymphoma, and had rib fractures, among other serious health problems, they said.

Eventually, the Lebanese Supreme Court dropped the charges against Fakhoury. He was returned to the United States on March 19, 2020, on a US Marine Corps Osprey aircraft. He died five months later.

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Israelis are Wary of Returning to the North Because they Don't Trust the Ceasefire with Hezbollah

A general view of the border line between Israel and Lebanon following the ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed group Hezbollah, as seen from its Israeli side, November 28, 2024. REUTERS/ Shir Torem
A general view of the border line between Israel and Lebanon following the ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed group Hezbollah, as seen from its Israeli side, November 28, 2024. REUTERS/ Shir Torem
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Israelis are Wary of Returning to the North Because they Don't Trust the Ceasefire with Hezbollah

A general view of the border line between Israel and Lebanon following the ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed group Hezbollah, as seen from its Israeli side, November 28, 2024. REUTERS/ Shir Torem
A general view of the border line between Israel and Lebanon following the ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed group Hezbollah, as seen from its Israeli side, November 28, 2024. REUTERS/ Shir Torem

Dean Sweetland casts his gaze over a forlorn street in the Israeli community of Kibbutz Malkiya. Perched on a hill overlooking the border with Lebanon, the town stands mostly empty after being abandoned a year ago.
The daycare is closed. The homes are unkempt. Parts of the landscape are ashen from fires sparked by fallen Hezbollah rockets. Even after a tenuous Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire designed to let Israelis return to the north, the mood here is far from celebratory.
“The ceasefire is rubbish,” said Sweetland, a gardener and member of the kibbutz’s civilian security squad. “Do you expect me to ring around my friends and say, ‘All the families should come home?’ No."
Across the border, Lebanese civilians have jammed roads in a rush to return to homes in the country's south, but most residents of northern Israel have met the ceasefire with suspicion and apprehension.
“Hezbollah could still come back to the border, and who will protect us when they do?” Sweetland asked.
Israel’s government seeks to bring the northern reaches of the country back to life, particularly the line of communities directly abutting Lebanon that have played a major role in staking out Israel’s border.
But the fear of Hezbollah, a lack of trust in United Nations peacekeeping forces charged with upholding the ceasefire, deep anger at the government and some Israelis' desire to keep rebuilding their lives elsewhere are keeping many from returning immediately.
When the truce took effect, about 45,000 Israelis had evacuated from the north. They fled their homes after Hezbollah began firing across the border on Oct. 8, 2023, in solidarity with its ally Hamas in Gaza. That triggered more than a year of cross-border exchanges, with Lebanese villages in the south and Israeli communities facing the border taking the brunt of the pain.
During the truce's initial 60-day phase, Hezbollah is supposed to remove its armed presence from a broad band of southern Lebanon where the military says the militant group had been digging in for years by gathering weapons and setting up rocket launch sites and other infrastructure. Under the ceasefire, a UN peacekeeping force known as UNIFIL and a beefed-up Lebanese army presence are supposed to ensure Hezbollah doesn’t return.
Many residents of northern Israel are skeptical that the peace will hold.
Sarah Gould, who evacuated Kibbutz Malkiya at the start of the war with her three kids, said Hezbollah fired on the community up to and just past the minute when the ceasefire took effect early Wednesday.
“So for the government to tell me that Hezbollah is neutralized," she said, "it’s a perfect lie.”
Residents fear for their safety in the far north in Gaza, where Israel is pushing forward with a war that has killed over 44,000 Palestinians, Israel’s goal is the eradication of Hamas. But in Lebanon, Israel’s aims were limited to pushing Hezbollah away from the border so northern residents could return home.
Israeli critics say the government should have kept fighting to outright cripple Hezbollah or to clear out the border area, which is home to hundreds of thousands of Lebanese.
“I won’t even begin to consider going home until I know there’s a dead zone for kilometers across the border,” the 46-year-old Gould said.
Some wary Israelis trickled back home Thursday and Friday to areas farther from the border. But communities like Kibbutz Manara, set on a tiny slice of land between Lebanon and Syria, remained ghost towns.
Orna Weinberg, 58, who was born and raised in Manara, said it was too early to tell whether the ceasefire would protect the community.
Perched above all the other border villages, Manara was uniquely vulnerable to Hezbollah fire throughout the war. Three-quarters of its structures were damaged.
In the kibbutz’s communal kitchen and dining hall, ceiling beams have collapsed. The uprooted floorboards are covered with ash from fires that also claimed much of the kibbutz’s cropland.
Rocket fragments abound. The torso of a mannequin, a decoy dressed in army green, lies on the ground.
Weinberg tried to stay in Manara during the war, but after anti-tank shrapnel damaged her home, soldiers told her to leave. On Thursday, she walked along her street, which looks out directly over a UNIFIL position separating the kibbutz from a line of Lebanese villages that have been decimated by Israeli bombardment and demolitions.
Weinberg said UNIFIL hadn’t prevented Hezbollah’s build-up in the past, “so why would they be able to now?”
“A ceasefire here just gives Hezbollah a chance to rebuild their power and come back to places that they were driven out of,” she said.
The truce seemed fragile.
Associated Press reporters heard sporadic bursts of gunfire, likely Israeli troops firing at Lebanese attempting to enter the towns. Israel’s military says it is temporarily preventing Lebanese civilians from returning home to a line of towns closest to the border, until the Lebanese military can deploy there in force.
Even in less battered communities, no one returns home. Though the atmosphere along the border was tense, Malkiya showed signs of peace. With Hezbollah’s rockets stopped, some residents returned briefly to the kibbutz to peer around cautiously.
At a vista overlooking the border, where the hulking wreckage of Lebanese villages could be made out, a group of around 30 soldiers gathered. Just days ago, they would have made easy targets for Hezbollah fire.
Malkiya has sustained less damage than Manara. Still, residents said they would not return immediately. During a year of displacement, many have restarted their lives elsewhere, and the idea of going back to a front-line town on the border is daunting.
In Lebanon, where Israeli bombardment and ground assaults drove some 1.2 million people from their homes, some of the displaced crowded into schools-turned-shelters or slept in the streets.
In Israel, the government paid for hotels for evacuees and helped accommodate children in new schools. Gould predicted residents would return to the kibbutz only when government subsidies for their lodging dried up — “not because they want to, but because they feel like they can’t afford an alternative.”
“It’s not just a security issue,” Gould said. “We’ve spent more than a year rebuilding our lives wherever we landed. It’s a question of having to gather that up and move back somewhere else, somewhere that’s technically our old house but not a home. Nothing feels the same.”
It’s unclear if schools in the border communities will have enough students to reopen, Gould said, and her children are already enrolled elsewhere. She’s enjoyed living farther from the border, away from an open war zone.
There’s also a deep feeling that the communities were abandoned by the government, Sweetland said.
Sweetland is one of roughly 25 civilian security volunteers who stayed throughout the war, braving continual rocket fire to keep the kibbutz afloat. They repaired damaged homes, put out blazes and helped replace the kibbutz generator when it was taken out by Hezbollah fire. They were on their own, with no firefighters or police willing to risk coming, he said.
“We didn’t have any help for months and months and months, and we pleaded, ‘Please help us.’”
Sweetland said he will keep watching over the hushed pathways of the once-vibrant community in hopes his neighbors will soon feel safe enough to return. But he predicted it would take months.
Weinberg hopes to move back to Manara as soon as possible. On Thursday, she spotted a former neighbor who was about to leave after checking the damage to her home.
Weinberg grasped her hand through the car window, asking how she was. The woman grimaced and began to cry. Their hands parted as the car slowly rolled out through the gates and drove away.