Terrorism

Mark Parsons was providing security for a U.S. state department convoy in the Gaza strip when he was killed by a roadside bomb. The Plaintiffs in this case are Parsons’ estate, his siblings, and his parents’ estate. The Defendants are the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

The Plaintiffs initially filed this lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1991 which gives United States nationals killed or injured by acts of terrorism the right to bring a civil lawsuit in federal court. The complaint alleged that the Defendants were at least partially responsible for the attack by providing material support to and conspiring with the terrorist or terrorists who planted and detonated the bomb. The district court found that the Plaintiffs’ allegations were insufficient granted summary judgment for the Defendants.

The United States Court of Appeals affirms with respect to the conspiracy claim, but reverses with respect to the material support claim. The Court holds that a reasonable juror could conclude that both Defendants could have provided material support to terrorists to carry out the attack.

On appeal, the Plaintiffs dispute the district court’s interpretation of 18 U.S.C. § 2339A. According to the district court, Section 2339A requires them to identify the actual bomber. Plaintiffs claim that they should prevail so long as they can show that the Defendants provided material support to whoever directly carried out the attack. The Court agrees with Plaintiffs understanding of that statute.

The Court first took by an accounting of the evidence which the Plaintiff’s presented.

“Among the evidence the Parsons family offered to prove these theories, three documents, discovered in the Palestinian Authority’s investigative file and that the parties and the district court have thus far treated as admissible, are central to this case.

The first document … is Qarmout’s statement to Palestinian Authority interrogators in which Qarmout admits that he prepared to plant a bomb on Salahadeen Road in approximately the same location as the bomb that killed Parsons. In that statement, Qarmout also describes the three bombs he possessed in the month prior to this attack. The second piece of evidence … is the FBI’s forensic report. Lastly, the family relied on a two-page memo having an unidentified author addressed to the ‘Director General of the Preventive Security...