TERROR SUITS AGAINST ARAB BANK PROCEED:

A U.S. judge in Manhattan upheld three lawsuits accusing the Jordan-based Arab Bank of promoting Palestinian suicide attacks by funneling Saudi money to bombers’ families.

U.S. District Judge Nina Gershon denied six of eight counts in Arab Bank’s March motion to dismiss the litigation, allowing bombing survivors and victims’ families to move forward with their lawsuits seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. The lawsuits claim that Arab Bank aided terrorism by acting as the administrator of an “insurance plan” by the Saudi Committee in Support of the Intifada Al Quds, which paid $5,300 to the families of Palestinian bombers killed in attacks by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades.

The plaintiffs are U.S. citizens, including the widow of John Linde Jr., a security guard from Missouri who died when a bomb tore apart a vehicle in a U.S. diplomatic convoy in the Gaza Strip in 2003.

Arab Bank contended the lawsuit should be thrown out because the bank had no intention of promoting terrorism and because the plaintiffs could not link the bank’s actions to their injuries or their relatives’ deaths.

“It really opens the way for all of these American terror victims to have their day in court,” said Mark Werbner, one of the lawsuit’s lead attorneys.

Arab Bank said it remains confident that it will prevail at trial. “The bank abhors terrorism,” it said in a statement.

U.S. regulators announced last month that Arab Bank would pay a $24 million civil fine for allegedly inadequate controls to prevent money laundering at its New York branch. The Central Bank of Jordan, which oversees the Arab Bank, announced earlier this year that the New York branch would be closed.