The U.S. Supreme Court on April 3 agreed to hear an appeal to a lower court decision dismissing claims against Arab Bank Group unit Arab Bank Plc over its alleged links to militant groups, Reuters reported the same day.
Roughly 6,000 plaintiffs, including relatives of non-U.S. citizens who died in militant attacks in Israel and the Palestinian territories, want to hold the bank financially liable under a U.S. law called the Alien Tort Statute for the attacks, which took place between 1995 and 2005, according to the report. They said the bank helped Hamas and other militant groups fund the attacks through its branch in New York, Reuters noted.
In 2015, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York upheld a 2013 dismissal of the plaintiffs' claims, saying the bank could not be sued under the statute because it is a corporation, Reuters noted.