Prosecutor general seeks judicial action on US court ruling on Iran’s assets

Iran’s Prosecutor General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri proposed setting up a juridical task force, made up of top Iranian judges, to take action, within the framework of international law, against the US decision to seize the Central Bank of Iran’s assets in an American bank.

According to Press TV, in a meeting of senior judges in Tehran on Tuesday, Montazeri said the task force can address the issue of seizure of Iran’s assets with regard to the international law and study the practical measures Iran can take for reimbursement.

Last week, US Supreme Court upheld the Congress and President Barack Obama’s actions to hold Iran financially responsible for the 1983 bombing that killed 241 Marines at their barracks in the Lebanese capital, Beirut.

The ruling allows the families of the Marines and victims of other attacks that courts have linked to Iran to seize some $2 billion in assets held in New York’s Citibank, belonging to the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), which has been blocked under US sanctions.

Elsewhere in the meeting, the Iranian prosecutor general said he has sent a letter to the Foreign Ministry, calling for serious diplomatic action on the case.

It came after Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told the New Yorker in an interview published on Monday that the recent US court ruling will put an end to the “credibility of the US justice system”.

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi has also slammed the US court ruling as “invalid”, describing the move as “an international banditry.”