# United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued December 7, 2012 Decided March 22, 2013

No. 11-7045

M ICHELLE V AN B ENEDEN

, A PPELLANT

v.

A BDALLAH A L -S ANUSI

, M AJOR

, C HIEF

, L IBYAN I NTERNAL S ECURITY

, B AB

- AL -A ZIZYEH

, ET AL

., A PPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Columbia (No. 1:08-cv-01309)

Steven R. Perles argued the cause for appellant. With him
on the briefs were Edward B. MacAllister

, Richard D.
Heideman , and Tracy Reichman Kalik

.

Ramsey Clark argued the cause for appellees. With him
on the brief was Lawrence W. Schilling

.

Before: T ATEL and B ROWN

, Circuit Judges , and

W ILLIAMS

, Senior Circuit Judge

.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge B ROWN

.2

B ROWN

, Circuit Judge : On December 27, 1985, members of the Abu Nidal Organization attacked the international flights terminals in Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci Airport and Vienna’s Schwechat Airport, killing sixteen people and wounding over a hundred more. Peter Knowland was one of those injured in the Vienna att ack. Over two decades later, he sued Syria, Libya, and a num ber of Syrian and Libyan individuals and orga nizations for sponsoring and supporting
the terrorist attacks. 1 The district court dismissed the case as untimely, and Knowland’s legal representative, Michelle Van Beneden, 2 appealed. We reverse.

I

The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) protects foreign sovereigns from suit in the United States unless Congress specifically provides otherwise. 28 U.S.C. § 1604.
In the Antiterrorism and Effec tive Death Penalty Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-132, § 221(a), 110 Stat. 1214, 1241–42 (codified at 28 U.S.C. § 1605(a)(7)), Congress waived the immunity of foreign soverei gns designated by the State Department as state sponsors of terrorism in suits for personal injury or death resulting from, among other things, the provision of material support for terrorism. While this waiver removed one barrier to suits ag ainst foreign sovereigns, it did not empower plaintiffs to sue them directly: FSIA provided a private right of action for suits against officials, employees,

1 Only Syria, the Syrian Air Fo rce Intelligence, and the chief of the Syrian Air Force Intelligence remain defendants. The district court dismissed all claims against Libya and its agents after Congress passed the Libyan Claims Resolution Act, Pub. L. No. 110-301, 122 Stat. 2999 (2008).

2 Knowland died before the district court filed its opinion, leaving his estate to Michelle Va n Beneden. For consistency, we refer to Knowland throughout the opinion.3

and agents of the foreign sovere ign, but plaintiffs seeking to sue the sovereign itself were fo rced to invoke an independent cause of action, such as one provided by state law. See Cicippio-Puleo v. Is lamic Repub. of Iran , 353 F.3d 1024, 1029, 1036 (D.C. Cir. 2004).

In 2008, Congress amended this scheme. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, Pub. L. No. 110-181, § 1083, 122 Stat. 3, 338–44 (“NDAA”), repealed § 1605(a)(7) and replaced it with § 1605A. Section 1605A is similar to § 1605(a)(7), but it is “more advantageous to plaintiffs.” Simon v. Repub. of Iraq , 529 F.3d 1187, 1190 (D.C. Cir. 2008), rev’d on other grounds sub nom.

, Repub. of Iraq v. Beaty , 556 U.S. 848 (2009). Among other things, it provides a private right of acti on against sovereign entities. Yet even as the NDAA rang the kne ll for § 1605(a)(7) suits, it promised a slow burial. Firs t, a pending action brought under § 1605(a)(7) could be converted into a § 1605A action if the original action “relied upon” § 1605(a)(7) for a cause of action and was “adversely affected ” by the statute’s failure to provide one. NDAA § 1083(c)(2) (codified as note to § 1605A). Second, “[i]f an action arising out of an act or incident has been timely commenced under section 1605(a)(7) . . . any other action arising out of the same act or incident may be brought under section 1605A” within sixty days of judgment in the § 1605(a)(7) action. NDAA § 1083(c)(3) (codified as note to § 1605A); see 28 U.S.C. § 1605A(b) (permitting § 1605A acti ons if a “related action
was commenced under secti on 1605(a)(7)” within the limitations period).

Because Knowland filed suit af ter the § 1605A statute of limitations had run, his only hope of obtaining judicial relief depends on his ability to invoke the “related action” provision. According to Knowland, hi s suit is related to Estate4

of Buonocore v. Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya , Civ. Action No. 1:06-cv-00727 (D.D.C.) (filed Apr. 21, 2006), a § 1605(a)(7) su it against many of the same defendants for their alleged suppor t of the Rome attack. It is undisputed that Buonocore was timely filed and that
Knowland’s suit would be timel y filed under § 1083(c)(3) if

Buonocore is in fact a related action. Unfortunately for Knowland, the district court c oncluded the two actions were
not in fact related and dismissed the suit for failure to state a
claim. 3 We review the dismissal de novo

. Hettinga v. United
States , 677 F.3d 471, 476 (D.C. Cir. 2012).

II

The Abu Nidal Organization (“ANO”) seeks the
elimination of Israel and the derailment of the Middle East peace process. B UREAU OF C OUNTERTERRORISM

, D EP ’ T OF S TATE

, C OUNTRY R EPORTS ON T ERRORISM 2011 at 221 (2012). Since it split from the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1974, the ANO has staged attacks in over twenty countries, triggering a State Department designation as a foreign terrorist organization. Id.

According to Knowland’s co mplaint, which we assume
to be true and construe in th e light most favorable to him, see Papasan v. Allain , 478 U.S. 265, 283 (1986), the Vienna and

3 The district court held that a § 1083(c)(3) “related action” must be filed by the same plaintiff who filed the predicate § 1605(a)(7) action and that Know land’s action does not arise out
of “the same act or incident” as Buonocore . On appeal, Knowland challenges both holdings; inexplicably, however, Syria addresses only the second. Viewing this as an implicit concession, see, e.g. , S.
Cal. Edison Co. v. FERC , 603 F.3d 996, 1000 (D.C. Cir. 2010), we
do not address the district court’ s determination that Knowland’s
suit fails because he was not involved in Buonocore

.5

Rome attacks were part of a si ngle “plan to co nduct terrorist attacks at airports and tour ist attractions frequented by Americans and Israelis.” Compl. ¶¶ 29–30. Both groups of attackers trained together in a Syrian-sponsored training camp
in Lebanon and coordinate d their attacks to occur simultaneously. The two groups used the same type of weapons (Kalashnikov submachine rifles and type F1 hand grenades), which came from a si ngle source (the grenades in each attack bore the same markings), and they executed the same strategy: the terrorists met with an ANO contact upon
their arrival at their destin ation cities, exchanging unused money and passports for clothe s and weapons; they surveyed the target terminals the day before the attack; and they initiated the attack at 9 a.m. local time after smuggling their weapons into the airports.

Syria insists the two attacks cannot be the “same act or
incident” because of the literal differences between the two attacks: the two airports, “nearly 500 miles” apart, are distinct physical facilities, and the a ttacks involved different ANO personnel, law enforcement agents, and victims. Appellee Br.
at 3. The district court took a similar approach, noting in addition the grammatical singular ity of the statutory language (“act or incident” rather than “acts or incidents”). These analyses are overly formulaic.

Guided by the statute’s text and purpose, we interpret its ambiguities flexibly and capaciously. 4 When determining

4 “The text, history, and purpose of the statute make clear that the statute does not counsel a narrow reading.” Doe v. Bin Laden

, 663 F.3d 64, 70 (2d Cir. 2011) (referring generally to FSIA’s terrorism exception). Congress sought to lighten the jurisdictional burdens borne by victims of terrorism seeking judicial redress, such as by ensuring that individuals barred from suit under § 1605(a)(7) would nevertheless be able to bring their claims. Though the statute6

whether two or more attacks s hould be deemed part of the same “act or incident,” we look not to single points of congruence but to the full spectrum along which discrete actions increasingly relate. Some terrorist organizations are close-knit, insular cells; others are loose-jointed networks of largely independent operationa l units joined by a common goal. Interpreting the proxima l connection between two acts of terrorism therefore require s a number of conceptual judgments—for instance, about th e causal role of a particular organizational objective, th e relationship between the organization and its members or affiliates, and the degree and nature of coordination among th e attacks. Mining semantics by invoking the ordinary meanings of “act” and “incident” provides no obvious help. Those or dinary meanings suggest it is as reasonable to say that “ act” refers to a single terrorist pulling the trigger a single time, while “incident” refers to the totality of that terrorist’s violen ce in a single day, as it is to say that “act” refers to the Vienna attack, while “incident” refers to the airport assaults as a whole.

This conceptual ambiguity is perhaps the inevitable concomitant of such events. Consider two others. On June 6, 1944, the Allied army landed on a stretch of Normandy coast spanning over fifty miles; on September 11, 2001, planes crashed into the Pentagon, both World Trade Center towers, and an empty field in Pennsylvania. Was the American landing at Utah beach part of the same “incident” as the British and Canadian landings at Juno beach? Was American

of limitations for § 1605(a)(7) claims was already set at the generous length of ten years, FSIA contained no mention of “related actions” until the NDAA, which reflected Congress’s judgment that “American citizens w ho have been aggrieved by any state sponsor of terrorism . . . deserve every possible means of
redress available to them.” 154 Cong. Rec. 288 (2008) (statement of Rep. McHugh).7

Airlines Flight 11’s crash into the North Tower of the World Trade Center part of the same “incident” as American Airlines Flight 77’s crash into the Pentagon? It is possible to answer both “yes” and “no” to each question. Ultimately, the answer depends on a broad consider ation of all relevant facts.

Taking everything together—a single group of people committing two simultaneous attacks planned as part of a
coordinated assault on an identif iable group of individuals at similar locations using weapons from the same shipment—we
think the Vienna and Rome a ttacks constitute the same
“incident.” The factors that mark the two attacks as constituents of a single incident distinguish this case from one where the only connections betw een the two terr orist attacks are the attackers’ ideology and purpose, training, and general methodology. The Vienna and Rome attacks were not discrete attacks that happened to occur on the same day, sharing just enough features that observers could project a relationship; they were organized jointly by the same terrorist organization and planned to occur simultane ously. Indeed, Syria concedes
that the simultaneous attack of two tour buses at opposite sides of a city would be a single act or incident if the attacks were planned together and by the same people. We see no
difference here.

As the jurisprudence under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(c) illustrates, Congress has allowed relation back of newly filed claims wh en doing so assures defendants notice within the limitations period. See Schiavone v. Fortune

, 477 U.S. 21, 31 (1986); Meijer, Inc. v. Biovail Corp. , 533 F.3d 857, 866 (D.C. Cir. 2008). Th e analogy is neither precise nor dispositive, but we neverthele ss note that in this case, the “act or incident” requirement does no violence to the
defendants’ notice interests. Given the nature of the8

allegations, the suit relating to the Rome attack put them on notice they may be liable for the Vienna attack.

III

For the reasons stated, the district court’s order dismissing the case is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consis tent with this opinion.

So ordered.