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.



US Tracking Nearly 500 Incidents of Civilian Harm During Israel’s Gaza War

 People pray by the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip October 30, 2024. (Reuters)
People pray by the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip October 30, 2024. (Reuters)
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US Tracking Nearly 500 Incidents of Civilian Harm During Israel’s Gaza War

 People pray by the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip October 30, 2024. (Reuters)
People pray by the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip October 30, 2024. (Reuters)

US State Department officials have identified nearly 500 potential incidents of civilian harm during Israel's military operations in Gaza involving US-furnished weapons, but have not taken further action on any of them, three sources, including a US official familiar with the matter, said this week.

The incidents - some of which might have violated international humanitarian law, according to the sources - have been recorded since Oct. 7, 2023, when the Gaza war started. They are being collected by the State Department's Civilian Harm Incident Response Guidance, a formal mechanism for tracking and assessing any reported misuse of US-origin weapons.

State Department officials gathered the incidents from public and non-public sources, including media reporting, civil society groups and foreign government contacts.

The mechanism, which was established in August 2023 to be applied to all countries that receive US arms, has three stages: incident analysis, policy impact assessment, and coordinated department action, according to a December internal State Department cable reviewed by Reuters.

None of the Gaza cases had yet reached the third stage of action, said a former US official familiar with the matter. Options, the former official said, could range from working with Israel's government to help mitigate harm, to suspending existing arms export licenses or withholding future approvals.

The Washington Post first reported the nearly 500 incidents on Wednesday.

The Biden administration has said it is reasonable to assess that Israel has breached international law in the conflict, but assessing individual incidents was "very difficult work," State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters on Wednesday.

"We are conducting those investigations, and we are conducting them thoroughly, and we are conducting them aggressively, but we want to get to the right answer, and it's important that we not jump to a pre-ordained result, and that we not skip any of the work," Miller said, adding that Washington consistently raises concerns over civilian harm with Israel.

The administration of President Joe Biden has long said it is yet to definitively assess an incident in which Israel has violated international humanitarian law during its operation in Gaza.

John Ramming Chappell, advocacy and legal adviser at the Center for Civilians in Conflict, said the Biden administration "has consistently deferred to Israeli authorities and declined to do its own investigations."

"The US government hasn't done nearly enough to investigate how the Israeli military uses weapons made in the United States and paid for by US taxpayers," he said.

The civilian harm process does not only look at potential violations of international law but at any incident where civilians are killed or injured and where US arms are implicated, and looks at whether this could have been avoided or reduced, said one US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A review of an incident can lead to a recommendation that a unit needs more training or different equipment, as well as more severe consequences, the official said.

Israel's military conduct has come under increasing scrutiny as its forces have killed more than 43,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the enclave's health authorities.

The latest episode of bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct. 7, 2023, when Palestinian Hamas fighters attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and abducting 250 others, according to Israeli tallies.