Tehran, Iran:
A court in Tehran has ordered the US government to pay nearly $50 billion in damages for the assassination of a top Iranian general nearly four years ago, the judiciary said on Wednesday.
Then-US President Donald Trump ordered a drone strike near Baghdad airport that killed General Qasem Soleimani, 62, and his Iraqi lieutenant Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis on January 3, 2020.
Days later, Iran retaliated by firing missiles at bases in Iraq housing U.S. and other coalition forces. No US personnel were killed, but Washington said dozens of people suffered traumatic brain injuries.
The Iranian judiciary's Mizan Online news agency said a court in Tehran had ordered the US government to pay $49.7 billion in “material, moral and punitive damages” following a lawsuit filed by more than 3,300 Iranians.
The court found 42 individuals and entities guilty, including Trump, the US government, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, Mizan added.
Qasem Soleimani commanded the Quds Force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' foreign operations arm.
He was one of the country's most popular public figures, leading Iran's operations in the Middle East and seen as a hero of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.
Iranian courts have now issued several rulings against the United States.
Last month, an Iranian court ordered the US government to pay $420 million in damages to the victims of a failed 1980 operation to free hostages held in the US embassy.
In August, a court in Tehran demanded that Washington pay $330 million in damages for “planning a coup” in 1980 against the young Islamic republic.
These lawsuits follow a series of multi-billion dollar damages awards against Tehran by US courts.
In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered that Iranian assets frozen in the United States be paid to victims of attacks that Washington blamed on Tehran, including the 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut and a 1996 explosion in Saudi Arabia.
Tehran denies all responsibility for the attacks.
It has appealed to international justice to help unlock funds from several Iranian individuals and companies frozen by Washington.
In March, the International Court of Justice ruled that Washington's asset freeze was “manifestly unreasonable.”
But it ruled that it had no jurisdiction to unfreeze nearly $2 billion in Iranian central bank assets frozen by the United States.
Iran and Washington have not had diplomatic relations since the aftermath of the 1979 revolution.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)