US court upholds dismissal of lawsuit over Sudan’s drug plant attack
March 28, 2009 (WASHINGTON) – A US federal appeals court upheld on Friday a decision to dismiss a lawsuit seeking $50-million in damages as compensation for the United States military’s destruction in 1998 of a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant in retaliation for al-Qaeda’s bombings of US embassies in Africa.
The case had been dismissed for the first time on August 11, 2004.
The plant was destroyed by cruise missiles launched from US Navy ships. Clinton blamed Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network for the embassy bombings and said the factory was associated with the network and produced an ingredient essential for nerve gas.
The U.S Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled the case presented a political question involving then-President Bill Clinton’s order to the military authorizing the missile strikes and that under the US Constitution it could not be reviewed by the judiciary. The court added that a political decision that cannot be reviewed by the judicial branch.
“President Clinton, in his capacity as commander in chief, fired missiles at a target of his choosing to pursue a military objective he had determined was in the national interest,” the appeals court decision says. “Under the Constitution, this decision is immune from judicial review.”
The owner of the plant, Salah Idriss who is a Sudanese naturalized Saudian, sued, saying senior administration officials defamed them to justify the strike and refused to compensate them for the destruction of the plant.
Idriss disputes Clinton administration claims that the plant was owned by the Sudan Military Industrial Complex Corporation, made no commercial products and was involved in the production of chemical weapons. He further said the plant produced only medicinal products, including more than half the pharmaceuticals used in Sudan.
(ST)