United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued December 7, 2012 Decided March 22, 2013 

No. 11-7045 

MICHELLE VAN BENEDEN, 

APPELLANT

v. 

ABDALLAH AL-SANUSI, MAJOR, CHIEF, LIBYAN INTERNAL 

SECURITY, BAB-AL-AZIZYEH, ET AL., 

APPELLEES

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: TATEL and BROWN, Circuit Judges, and 

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge. 

 Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge BROWN. 
2 

 BROWN, 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 attack. Over two decades later, he 

sued Syria, Libya, and a number of Syrian and Libyan 

individuals and organizations 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 Effective 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 sovereigns 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 against 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 Force 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 Van Beneden. For consistency, we 

refer to Knowland throughout the opinion. 
3 

and agents of the foreign sovereign, but plaintiffs seeking to 

sue the sovereign itself were forced to invoke an independent 

cause of action, such as one provided by state law. See 

Cicippio-Puleo v. Islamic 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 action against sovereign entities. 

Yet even as the NDAA rang the knell for § 1605(a)(7) suits, it 

promised a slow burial. First, 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 actions if a “related action 

was commenced under section 1605(a)(7)” within the 

limitations period). 

Because Knowland filed suit after 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, his suit is related to Estate 
4 

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) suit against many of the same 

defendants for their alleged support of the Rome attack. It is 

undisputed that Buonocore was timely filed and that 

Knowland’s suit would be timely filed under § 1083(c)(3) if 

Buonocore is in fact a related action. Unfortunately for 

Knowland, the district court concluded 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. BUREAU OF COUNTERTERRORISM, DEP’T OF 

STATE, COUNTRY REPORTS ON TERRORISM 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 complaint, which we assume 

to be true and construe in the 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 Knowland’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 single “plan to conduct terrorist 

attacks at airports and tourist attractions frequented by 

Americans and Israelis.” Compl. ¶¶ 29–30. Both groups of 

attackers trained together in a Syrian-sponsored training camp 

in Lebanon and coordinated 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 single 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 destination cities, exchanging unused 

money and passports for clothes 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 attacks 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 singularity 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 statute 
6 

whether two or more attacks should 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 operational units joined by a common 

goal. Interpreting the proximal connection between two acts 

of terrorism therefore requires a number of conceptual 

judgments—for instance, about the causal role of a particular 

organizational objective, the relationship between the 

organization and its members or affiliates, and the degree and 

nature of coordination among the attacks. Mining semantics 

by invoking the ordinary meanings of “act” and “incident” 

provides no obvious help. Those ordinary 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 violence 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 who 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 consideration 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 identifiable group of individuals at 

similar locations using weapons from the same shipment—we 

think the Vienna and Rome attacks 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 between the two terrorist 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 simultaneously. 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 when 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). The analogy is neither precise 

nor dispositive, but we nevertheless note that in this case, the 

“act or incident” requirement does no violence to the 

defendants’ notice interests. Given the nature of the 
8 

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 consistent with this opinion. 

So ordered.