No decision yet in the camel jockey lawsuit

the.point.is. news agency

Lawyers for Dubai leaders urged a federal judge on Monday July 16 2007 in Miami to dismiss a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of thousands of children forced to ride camels in the last 30 years.
Judge Cecilia Altonaga, the first Cuban-American woman to have been named as a federal judge in 2003, did not say when she would rule.
Lawyers for the children based their lawsuit on the 1789 Alien Tort Statute, that allows federal courts to hear claims by foreigners in cases such as slavery, torture and privacy.

New York. Federal judge Cecilia Altonaga was urged yesterday by attorneys for two Dubai leaders to dismiss a class-action lawsuit in the camel jockey case (Photo Ansar Burney Trust). The lawsuit was filed in September 2006 by US lawyers on behalf of thousands of children forced to ride racing camels in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The attorneys for the two leaders - Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, ruler of Dubai and the Emirates prime minister, and his brother Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid al Maktoum – argued it was not the role of US courts to rule on an alleged offense which happened abroad. Lawyers for the children said that the two defendants should be held accountable for what amounted to slavery. If convicted, the brothers could have to pay millions of dollars in compensation.

The reach of US class-action lawsuits is now global. This case was brought by Motley Rice, a prominent law firm known for the huge settlements it won with the tobacco industry in the 1990s. John A.Thornton, one of the lawyers for the children, did not answer his phone yesterday, but one of his colleagues told the New York Times last month that this legal battle against the two Dubai leaders was not about money but about justice.

Abuses against children jockey in the UAE are documented. In 2005, a report published by the State Department said that thousands of children from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Mauritania and Sudan, some as young as 2, were trafficked to be used as camel jockeys. The report also mentioned sexual and physical abuses.

Lawyers for the thousands of children base their lawsuit on the 1789 Alien Tort Statute. According to this text, foreigners who say they were injured “in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States”, can file a lawsuit in the US even if the abuse took place abroad.

Beth Stephens, a law professor at Rutgers and an expert on the Alien Tort Statute, said in an interview with the.point.is. news agency that “defendants must have been physically present in the US at some point and must retain ties with the US” for attorneys to use the 1789 Statute. According to attorneys for the plaintiffs, the Dubai leaders still own property in Florida and Kentucky.

Lawyers for the two sheikhs argued on Monday that this link to the US is not strong enough for an American court to take up the case. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum wrote a letter to George Bush last February, asking him to intervene. UAE authorities say they have banned the use of children jockeys and claim that 1,077 children have been repatriated since 2005. Last April, they increased the compensation fund to about $11 million.

This amount is not enough for the plaintiffs’ attorneys. Beth Stephens argues that in cases of grave human rights abuses US courts should be allowed to rule. The week before the hearing, The State Department asked judge Altonaga to defer her verdict until September to give the Bush administration time to state its position. But on Monday July 16, the judge did not indicate how and when she would rule.

Jean-Cosme Delaloye
A French version of this story was published on July 17 2007 in 24heures and Tribune de Genève

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