Legal Deputy of the IRGC: News of the Trial of Americans Not Allowed to be Published

The legal deputy of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) criticized the officials of the Islamic Republic, stating that they did not allow news of court sessions against the U.S. government to be published. Sohrab-Ali Shamkhani said on Saturday, December 17, during a ceremony unveiling the verdict in the case filed by the families of soldiers killed, whom the Islamic Republic refers to as "defenders of the shrine," that other rulings have also been issued regarding the killing of Qassem Soleimani and similar cases, but "news of the trial of Americans was not allowed to be transmitted, which is a matter of grievance and criticism that it was not allowed to be published." Earlier, the Mizan news agency, affiliated with the judiciary, reported on the holding of a court session related to the case of Qassem Soleimani's killing, the former commander of the Quds Force, and announced that the next session would be held on December 16 of this year. The court examining the complaint of the families of the soldiers and militias known as "defenders of the shrine" condemned the U.S. government to pay "$48 billion and 860 million" in damages. The Islamic Republic condemned and fined the U.S. for its "support" of the Pahlavi regime. Sohrab-Ali Shamkhani, during the reading of the court's verdict, stated that American officials attribute the deaths of terrorists in Lebanon, Syria, Kenya, and Iraq to the Islamic Republic, saying, "States have immunity, and if a state is suing another state, it must bring it to the International Court of Justice." He did not explain why the judiciary of the Islamic Republic independently held a court against the U.S. on this matter. According to the legal deputy of the IRGC, the Islamic Republic has been ordered to pay "$4 billion" in damages in U.S. courts for the survivors of 68 Americans killed in Israel. A group of victims of the Hamas attack has filed complaints against the Islamic Republic in two federal courts in the U.S. Over the past two decades, the Islamic Republic has been ordered to pay large sums in multiple cases in U.S. courts related to the killing of American citizens on Israeli soil. In all those cases, Iran's frozen assets in the U.S. have been designated as the financial source for the determined compensation amounts. In one of these cases, a U.S. court last year ordered the Islamic Republic and Syria to pay $90 million in damages to the survivors of an attack that occurred in 2015 in Israel due to their support for terrorism. The judge stated that the Islamic Republic and Syria were "responsible for the murder" of an American couple who were killed in an attack by Palestinian gunmen in the West Bank, and the financial compensation should be taken from the governments of Tehran and Damascus.