Sudanese drug firm can’t sue US over 1998 attack
By James Vicini
WASHINGTON, Aug 11 (Reuters) – A federal appeals court dismissed on Wednesday 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 appeals court ruled the case presented a political question involving then-President Bill Clinton’s order to the military authorising the missile strikes and that under the US Constitution it could not be reviewed by the judiciary.
The lawsuit was brought by El-Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries, which operated the plant in Khartoum, and by Salaheddin Ahmed Mohammed Idris, who purchased shares in the corporation for $18-million in 1998, before the facility was destroyed.
Clinton said the plant was being used to produce chemical weapons. The company has said it used the plant to supply drugs needed by impoverished people living in the country.
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 lawsuit was filed four years ago. A federal judge last year dismissed the case and the three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit agreed in a 43-page ruling.
Judge Raymond Clevenger, the author of the opinion, concluded the plaintiffs may not seek judicial review of the president’s designation of the plant as enemy property.
“The enemy property designation here was made in view of the president’s ‘go/no go’ decision regarding the use of force in what is deemed to be a foreign theater of war and in the face of what he perceived to be an imminent terrorist attack on the United States,” he wrote.
Clevenger emphasized the limited reach of the ruling. He said it applied solely to foreign – and not domestic – enemy property designations made by the president in anticipation of imminent attack on American citizens or military forces.