A U.S. court has ordered Iran and Syria to pay millions of dollars in compensation, to the parents of a three month old baby who was killed in a 2014 terrorist attack.
Little Chaya Zissel Braun, just three months old, was in her stroller on October 22, 2014 when a 21-year-old terrorist rammed his car into a crowd of Israelis exiting a Light Rail station in Jerusalem.
The baby’s father, Shmuel, was also wounded in the attack. But her mother, Chana, wasn’t physically injured. A woman from Ecuador, Karen Jemima Mosquera, was also killed in the attack, and seven others were wounded in addition to Shmuel.
Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack and praised the actions of Abed al-Rahman Shaludeh, a resident of the Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan who was shot by a police officer at the scene and later died of his wounds in a hospital. He had spent 16 months prior in prison for security offenses, and had been released in December 2013.
Because the baby had American citizenship, her heartbroken parents filed a lawsuit in a United States court of law, suing Iran and Syria on the grounds the two countries finance terrorism by Hamas.
The family was represented by Attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, the head of Shurat HaDin – the Israeli Law Center – an organization that wages a legal war around the world against terror.
Chaya Zissel’s parents are slated to receive $ 178 million in compensation for the death of their baby daughter.