Sbarro terror attack (illustration)
Sbarro terror attack (illustration)Flash 90

Arab Bank on Friday formally requested a re-trial from a US federal court in New York after a jury found the Jordan-based multinational liable for 24 Hamas terrorist attacks.

The bank claimed the September 22 verdict was "the inevitable consequence of a series of incorrect and prejudicial rulings" and called for a new trial "to correct this miscarriage of justice."

The case saw 300 US victims of 24 terror attacks carried out in Israel between 2001 and 2004 hold the bank for liable for supporting
terrorism by transferring funds to Hamas.

The trial aggregated evidence related to the attacks and thousands of transfers processed for hundreds of entities over a ten-year-period in a mountain of evidence against the bank, it's court filing said.

However, the filing claimed the evidence gave the jury "a dizzying amount of evidence that doubtless muddled their deliberative process with regard to the bank's alleged liability."

The September 22 jury verdict at a US federal court in Brooklyn against the bank, which has assets worth $46.4 billion, was the first major verdict under the 2001 anti-terrorism act.

The defense argued there was no evidence Arab Bank executives supported terrorism and rejected the allegation that the institution knowingly made payments to designated terrorists.

But the plaintiffs said the bank transferred more than $70 million to a Saudi terror entity, and charities they showed served as a front for Hamas and 11 other globally-designated terrorist clients.

Included was $60,000 transferred to Hamas arch-terrorist Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who was assassinated by Israel in 2004 after overseeing a total of 425 terror attacks killing 377 Israelis and wounded 2,076.

The bank claimed the transfer to Yassin was due to a "spelling mistake" of his name, which was not detected by software.

The Arab Bank Group has more than 600 branches in 30 countries and a shareholders' equity base of $7.8 billion.

AFP contributed to this report.