Iran Rejects US Court Ruling on Fine to Kidnapped FamilyIran on Sunday rejected the US Federal Court ruling on a fine to a Catholic Father who was kidnapped in Lebanon in 1995, dismissing the verdict as "unlawful."The court based its claims on illogical evidences and they do not have anything to do with the Islamic republic, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said. A U.S. federal judge recently ruled that Iran must pay a fine of 314.6 million U.S. dollars to the heirs and the family of Father Lawrence Jenko, a director of a Catholic Charity Organization in Lebanon, who was kidnapped in 1995 and later freed. The official IRNA news agency quoted Asefi as noting that there were political motivations behind the court decision. It well demonstrated the influence of political lobbies on American judiciary bodies, he added. "None of the U.S. courts are qualified to look into such claims with regards to the dictates of the international law. This ruling lacks the needed features of judicial verdicts and is completely worthless from the legal point of view," the spokesman stressed. Iran has backed Lebanon's resistance group Hezbollah, or Party of God, in its fight against Israeli occupation. The United States holds Iran responsible for kidnapping some Americans in Lebanon. Iran and the U.S. severed relations in 1980 after some Muslim students seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution. |
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