Palestinian Authority ordered to pay millions in compensation to 2001 Sbarro terror attack victims

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The Palestinian Authority will be forced to pay compensation to the victims of the 2001 Sbarro Pizzeria suicide bombing in Jerusalem, the Jerusalem District Court ruled on Tuesday.

The compensation is set to amount to millions of shekels and is a result of two lawsuits that victims and their families filed in the past two decades since the attack during the Second Intifada.

On Aug. 9, 2001, a suicide bomber entered Sbarro in Jerusalem and murdered 16 people, 7 of whom were children. The bomber injured hundreds more.

The ruling follows a 2022 Supreme Court decision that found the Palestinian Authority (PA) to be liable for the attacks committed by terrorists, citing its "pay-for-slay" policy of providing financial rewards to terrorists and their families.

Earlier this month, the Jerusalem District Court approved a request from 11 Israeli families of Nova Music Festival victims to secure millions of dollars from the Palestinian Authority (PA) as financial compensation, pending the outcome of their lawsuit against the PA. The court issued a temporary attachment order for $42.8 million against the PA.

The bombing attack at the Sbarro Pizerria was executed by Arab female terrorist Ahlam Ahmad al-Tamimi, who led the suicide bomber Izz al-Din al-Masri to the Sbarro restaurant. Al-Tamimi was arrested and convicted in Israel, receiving multiple life sentences. However, she was released in 2011, alongside former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange. While she was in prison, al-Tamimi married her cousin, also a convicted terrorist, and has been granted safe haven in Jordan ever since.

Three Americans were killed in the Sbarro bombing. Two died during the attack and a third, Chana Nachenberg, died after being in a coma for 22 years.

One of the other American victims was Malki Roth. Her family has persistently urged the U.S. government to prosecute al-Tamimi, who has been on the FBI Most Wanted list since 2017. However, Jordan has refused to extradite her, despite a 1995 U.S.-Jordan extradition treaty.

Al-Tamimi, born and raised in Jordan, was celebrated as a heroine upon her return in 2011. From Jordan, she has continued to glorify terrorism, hosting a talk show on Hamas' Al-Quds TV since 2012. She has traveled across the Middle East, addressing school and university groups and has expressed joy over the deaths of Israeli children in the Sbarro pizzeria attack.

Earlier this month, Roth’s father Arnold posted a new plea for help to bring his daughter's murderer to justice in the United States.

Roth wrote on 𝕏: “I need your help. In pressing the US for years to get its recalcitrant ally Jordan to deliver my child’s killer to the @FBI for trial in Washington, I have learned there’s nothing positive to say about Jordan. But Jordan is the junior partner in this monstrous saga. It’s the US and in particular the @StateDept with their worthless lip-service, the crocodile-tears sympathy for the families of the murdered Americans masking the inaction, that bear responsibility for @FBIMostWanted fugitive terrorist #AhlamTamimi remaining free all these years in Jordan. And not just free but also hugely influential with her own made-in-Jordan TV show that for 5 years trumpeted the values of jihad throughout the Arab world.”

“If you’re unaware of its political culture, Jordan has a notoriously repressive policy of controlling its people’s media. If #AhlamTamimi was permitted to smile into the camera and host one terrorist after another in that Amman TV studio (and she was), that’s because the Royal Hashemite Court wanted it to be. Please share this post. The Tamimi/Jordan scandal needs to be far better known. We need politicians to act. We need the news industry to enquire and report. It’s time for greater awareness of how US justice is being trampled. The trampling must stop now,” he added.