JERUSALEM, Israel — As police scrambled to contain a possible terror attack on a Mohammed cartoon contest in Texas, legal scholars and activists gathered in Jerusalem for a conference on terrorism and its implications for the laws of war.
The conference is hosted by Shurat HaDin, an organization that sues terror organizations and terror-supporting regimes on behalf of the victims of terror. Recently, Shurat HaDin won a $330 million judgement against the government of North Korea for kidnapping, torturing and killing pastor Kim Dong-Shik, who was a U.S. permanent resident. Earlier this year, Shurat HaDin won a large judgment against the Palestinian Authority on behalf of American victims of the second intifada.
The purpose of its litigation, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner told the conference in her opening remarks Monday morning, is to cut off funding to terror groups, force them to cut their operations, and win justice on behalf of victims and their families.
In one interesting legal gambit, Shurat HaDin has targeted Iran by suing the U.S.-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in 2014, hoping to seize Iranian domain names to pay the damages of terror victims.
The conference has drawn hundreds of legal scholars from all over the world, and will feature several Israeli military leaders, including past Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Benny Gantz and Minister of Defense Moshe “Bogey” Ya’alon.
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