March 28, 2024

U.S. Judge Orders Iran to Pay $180 Million to Washington Post Reporter and Family

His wife was not among those awarded damages because the particular law through which the claims were made extended to family members who were United States citizens and she was not a citizen at the time the lawsuit was filed, Mr. Rezaian’s lawyer, David W. Bowker, said.

Mr. Rezaian’s brother Ali spearheaded a campaign to get Mr. Rezaian released that consumed his life and cost him about $300,000 in flights, legal expenses and other related costs. Their mother, Mary, had her life uprooted and suffered emotional distress over her son’s treatment, the judge wrote.

Mr. Bowker said that Mr. Rezaian’s detention and abuse were “a totally traumatic thing that will be with him for the rest of his life.”

“Given what he has been through, he and the family are doing remarkably well and are determined to move ahead with their lives,” he said.

The judge’s order was a default judgment that came after the plaintiffs submitted expert evidence and testified in a full trial. The Iranian government put on no defense, Mr. Bowker said. A spokesman for the Iranian government did not return a phone message and email requesting comment on Friday night.

While it is highly unlikely that Iran would pay any damages, they could be paid from a fund established by Congress in 2015 to pay victims of terrorism, Mr. Bowker said. The fund, which has paid out more than $2 billion, was initially created with a federal appropriation and has since been augmented with money collected in sanctions, he said.

Mr. Rezaian is back working full time at The Post, where he is a global opinions writer.

“Our only focus at The Post has been on what was taken away from Jason, which was 544 days of his freedom,” The Post’s executive editor, Marty Baron, said in a statement on Friday night. “His imprisonment and that of his wife Yeganeh were wholly unjustified, and his treatment in one of Iran’s worst prisons was horrifying.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/world/middleeast/iran-jazon-rezaian-washington-post.html?emc=rss&partner=rss

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