The Arab Bank, which was found by a U.S. jury to have provided material support to Hamas will appeal the verdict, the bank’s lawyer said Monday, according to Bloomberg news.
The lawyer, Shand Stephens, said the bank will appeal because the judge’s instructions were “erroneous” and mistakes were made in determining which evidence would be allowed.
“The plaintiffs evidence in this case is a mile wide and an inch deep,” Stephens told reporters outside the courtroom, according to Bloomberg.
“The Second Circuit is going to reverse this,” he said referring to the appeals court in New York.
The jury said earlier Monday that Arab Bank must compensate the victims of two dozen attacks allegedly carried out by Hamas in Israel and Palestinian Authority-controlled territories.
The judgment, which followed a closely watched six-week trial in a Brooklyn federal court, came in what lawyers said was the first terrorism financing civil case to reach trial in the United States.
Nearly 300 Americans who were either victims or related to victims of the attacks had sued Arab Bank.
They accused the Jordan-based bank of knowingly maintaining accounts for Hamas operatives, and financing millions in payments for the families of suicide bombers and those imprisoned or injured during the Second Intifada, also known as the Oslo War, that began in 2000.
The bank went on trial in New York on August 14, and Stephens told the jury last week that there is no evidence that the bank’s executives supported terrorism.
The families of several Americans killed in attacks in the early 2000s allege the bank violated the 2001 Anti-Terrorism Act when it served as a conduit for money from a Saudi Arabian fund to the Palestinian Arab families.