Iran court to strip U.S. of embassy?

NICOSIA, Cyprus — The United States is in danger of losing its sprawling embassy in Tehran to an Iranian businessman who was abducted in a sting operation by U.S. customs agents 14 years ago.

A Tehran court awarded Hossein Alikhani more than $500 million in damages in the first lawsuit by an Iranian against the U.S. for supporting terrorism.

Now, three years after that ruling, a writ of enforcement is due to be served this week, after which the U.S. will have 10 days to respond by paying or presenting a list of assets in Iran to be seized as compensation.

The most valuable of those assets is the defunct U.S. Embassy. Alikhani, a Cyprus-based businessman, estimates it to be worth at most $120 million.

He spent 105 days in a U.S. jail in 1992 after being abducted in the Bahamas for allegedly violating U.S. sanctions against Libya. He argued that the sanctions did not apply to non-Americans outside the U.S.

The Bahamian government was furious, saying it had not been consulted. Alikhani's case also caused consternation in the U.S. Congress.

In his ruling three years ago, Chief Justice Mansour Pour Nouri of the Third Branch of the Tehran Public Court accused U.S. investigators of "kidnapping, false imprisonment, using force, battering, abusing and ultimately inflicting physical and psychological injuries."

Alikhani says he has made no plans yet for what to do with the embassy if he receives the deeds. "Maybe I would make it into a school, a university or a public park," he said from Tehran.

While few observers expect the embassy's title to land in Alikhani's hands anytime soon, the embassy has been a potent emblem of the enmity between the U.S. and Iran since 1979, when militant students seized the embassy and held 52 U.S. diplomats hostage for 444 days. The compound, its walls scrawled with anti-American graffiti, has long housed Revolutionary Guards.

The U.S. says that under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, diplomatic premises are immune from court judgments. But Alikhani counters that the U.S. flouted that convention in 1996 when it adopted the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. The act stripped countries on the State Department's list of sponsors of terrorism of their immunity from lawsuits in U.S. courts for terror acts perpetrated against U.S. citizens.

Since then, U.S. courts have awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to victims of terror overseas.

"So how can they come back and say that according to the Vienna Convention their assets are immune?" Alikhani asks.

Alikhani says his action was motivated by principle and followed U.S. court rulings holding Iran responsible for damages awarded to Americans held hostage in the 1980s by pro-Iran groups in Lebanon.

Earlier, Alikhani tried unsuccessfully to sue the U.S. for $360 million in Florida.

Alikhani's saga began in July 1990 when he sought to buy $1.6 million in spare parts for gas generators from a Florida company. He planned to ship the equipment through Germany to Libya for use in a government oil field.

Because Libya was under U.S. sanctions for supporting terrorism, the company rejected the deal and tipped off U.S. Customs. A sting operation led to Alikhani's arrest.

For 30 days he was questioned in several Florida hotels, where he says he was shackled to his bed at night, before being moved to a Miami prison where inmates included Manuel Noriega, former dictator of Panama. Amid anger in Congress over the abduction, Alikhani accepted a token charge and was freed after being sentenced to time served.