The family of Siavash Bayani won by default in U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr.’s Dec. 28 ruling because Iran ignored the legal action and presented no defense. The family now must try to collect from a nation that does not recognize the jurisdiction of U.S. courts.
Attorney Zohreh Mizrahi, who represented the family, said Thursday that she is confident the plaintiffs will be able to collect by seeking Iranian assets frozen in the United States, which has an economic embargo with Iran.
“A U.S. judgment carries the legal weight that we need … to bring a motion for attachment on any financial activity,” she said.
An after-hours call to the Interests Section of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Washington, D.C., was not answered.
Bayani was an officer in the Iranian Air Force since before the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Shah of Iran. He and his family sought U.S. asylum in 1984 after the Revolutionary Guard Corps began purging military officers who had served under the Shah.
Bayani became a naturalized U.S. citizen but in 1995 he returned to Iran to care for his mother, who was terminally ill with leukemia. He was arrested after being in the country about five months.
According to the lawsuit, Bayani was tortured in prison. His mother-in-law testified that when she saw Bayani he had been beaten so badly that he could not walk upright and whippings had deformed his head and neck so much that “he had become a new being.”
Iranian officials eventually contacted the family and offered to help get Bayani released in exchange for money. Family members paid $95,000, but Bayani was tried by a revolutionary court and hanged in 1997. The official Iranian government newspaper reported he was executed as a spy for the “Great Satan,” meaning the United States.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Bayani’s widow, two children and his estate, named the Iranian republic, the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, the Revolutionary Guards Corps and several government and religious leaders, including former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
In his ruling, the judge found the suit had not provided any evidence that Rafsanjani, Khamenei or others were liable.
