A federal court in Rhode Island has ordered a freeze of all US-based assets of the Palestinian Authority after the Palestinian government failed to pay $116 million in damages imposed by the court last year, according to legal documents obtained on Tuesday.
After a five-year legal battle, the court last year ordered the Palestinian Authority to pay the damages for the 1996 shooting deaths of American Yaron Ungar and his Israeli wife Efrat near an Israeli town.
When the Palestinian government did not pay, the lawyer for Ungar's estate, David Strachman, petitioned the court to block the assets, Strachman told Reuters.
Court papers show the US District Court in Rhode Island granted a temporary freeze on the assets of the Palestinian Authority, the Palestine Liberation Organisation and related officials and entities in April, and then blocked the funds indefinitely in May.
The defendants may still withdraw normal expenses from designated accounts to pay for the daily operation of their offices in New York and Washington.
The Boston Globe, which reported on the freeze on Tuesday, said the frozen assets include US holdings in a $1.3 billion Palestinian investment fund and bank accounts used to pay Palestinian representatives in Washington, but this could not be confirmed.
Strachman said he had also initiated a court action to seize and sell Palestinian-owned real estate in New York that serves as the Palestinian observer mission to the United Nations.
Neither officials at the Palestinian mission in New York nor the two lawyers representing the Palestinian Authority in the case were immediately available for comment.