Courthouse News Service: Closing Arguments Today in Arab Bank Trial

Story link Courthouse News Service  By NICK DIVITO

Closing Statements in Arab Bank Trial

   BROOKLYN, N.Y. (CN) - Arab Bank "did what it was required to do" and
isn't liable for 24 recent Hamas-sponsored suicide attacks in the West
Bank, a defense lawyer said Thursday during closing arguments in the
landmark jury trial.
     "The bank isn't supposed to run around and
figure out" who's on a backlist, attorney Shand Stephens told a jury in
U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan's high-rise courtroom. "That's what the
government does. And you wouldn't want it any other way."
     Stephens presented the bank's closing arguments after a six-week trial stemming
from a decade-old federal class action lawsuit filed by families of 300
victims of two dozen separate Hamas-led suicide attacks in the West Bank
during the Second Intifada between 2000 and 2004.

Plaintiff attorney Tad Turner gives closing statement, large photo of Sheikh Yassin lower right corner 

   Tab Turner, who represents the families, countered during his closing
this afternoon that Arab Bank served as "'The Bank of the Stars' in the
world of terrorism." He said it made $2 billion off terrorism in the
year 2003 alone.
     The jury should "step up to the plate and say not any more ... it stops right here in Brooklyn," Turner said.
     "This
bank was the only bank making money off the terrorists," the attorney
continued. "They're not interested in truth. They're interested in
protecting their pocket book. That is the power that you have: to tell
other banks, 'Don't you dare do business with these people. You do, and
you will pay.'

Plaintiff attorney Michael Elsner giving closing statement showing jury radical calendar approved and distributed by Arab Bank in Jordan, with diagram of payments by Arab Bank to families of suicide bombers.

 Note Mr Elsner quote from Reuters story below
“We all have a role to play, to prevent terrorism, every one of us,” said Michael Elsner of Motley Rice. “We are interlinked, interdependent. We need to be together to stop this. It just can’t be that we can only act when a government says, ‘You have to act now.’ It can’t be that we only do it when the computer gives us an alert.”

 

Why the Arab Bank terror-finance trial matters

By Alison Frankel

September 19, 2014

http://blogs.reuters.com/alison-frankel/2014/09/19/why-the-arab-bank-terror-finance-trial-matters/
From the Reuters story, link above

The four lawyers who spoke Thursday for the plaintiffs in the Arab Bank case assured them that it can – that the message they send with their verdict will force international banks to do more than check wire transfers against terrorism blacklists. If jurors find Arab Bank liable for processing about $73 million that allegedly propped up Hamas operations in the Second Intifada, the lawyers said, banks around the world will be on notice that they’re responsible for actively policing against financing terror.

“We all have a role to play, to prevent terrorism, every one of us,” said Michael Elsner of Motley Rice. “We are interlinked, interdependent. We need to be together to stop this. It just can’t be that we can only act when a government says, ‘You have to act now.’ It can’t be that we only do it when the computer gives us an alert.”

The New York Times: Arab Bank's Lawyer Spars With Witness

 

At Trial, Arab Bank’s Lawyer Spars With Witness 

Link: http://nyti.ms/1qimxXg

By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD 

SEPT. 4, 2014

For three days, the former chief of the Israeli military’s Palestinian Affairs Department delivered important, if a bit dry, testimony in the terrorism financing trial of Arab Bank in Federal District Court in Brooklyn.

The witness, Arieh Spitzen, had highlighted bank records showing Arab Bank routing payments to people who, he said, were widely known to be terrorists or members of Hamas.

But during cross-examination on Thursday, the typically dull dissection of bank records became lively. Mr. Spitzen was tenacious, while Shand S. Stephens, a lawyer for Arab Bank, was aggressive — making them well-matched sparring partners.

Arab Bank lawyer Shand Stephens cross examining Arieh Spitzen, plaintiff's expert witness. Mr Stephens used the example of a ream of paper to highlight how many bank documents the Arab Bank had produced. By Elizabeth Williams                                  ( click on the image to see larger)

 The case is also noteworthy because Arab Bank did not turn over a huge number of bank records; it said that would have violated financial privacy laws in some of the countries.

To “restore the evidentiary balance,” a judge who had handled the case in 2010 ruled that the bank could not explain to the jury why it did not produce the requested records.

The bank’s refusal to turn over such records stymied investigative efforts by Mr. Spitzen, who at several points on the stand referred to his frustration.

But Mr. Stephens was able to get across the point that Arab Bank had produced many documents. He opened his cross-examination by noting that the 225,000 documents the bank had turned over would reach the height of a seven-story building. After Mr. Stephens asked if those calculations were correct, Mr. Spitzen deferred to Mr. Stephens, saying he trusted him.

“Well, you’re probably one of the few people in America that trusts lawyers,” Mr. Stephens said, to laughter from spectators.

Mr. Spitzen got his own laughs, when he pointed out that he had not printed all of these records and had examined them on a computer. “I’m not using that quantity of paper,” he said. “It’s not good for the environment.”