NEW YORK: Wounded US veterans and family members of US soldiers killed in Iraq sued five European banks on Monday, seeking to hold them responsible for shootings and roadside bombings because they allegedly processed Iranian money that paid for the attacks.

The lawsuit filed in US District Court in Brooklyn, New York, named Barclays Plc, Credit Suisse Group AG , HSBC Holdings Plc, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Standard Chartered.

Barclays, Credit Suisse, RBS and Standard Chartered declined to comment. HSBC did not respond to requests for comment.

The lawsuit was brought under the US Anti-Terrorism Act, a 1992 law that permits victims to bring private suits against alleged financiers of militant operations.

The lawsuit alleges the banks conspired with Iranian banks to mask wire transactions in order to evade US sanctions. The Iranian banks then funneled more than $100 million to militant groups that operated in Iraq at Iran’s direction, according to the suit.

UNIQUE USE OF 1992 LAW

The suit is the first case under the Anti-Terrorism Act in which former US soldiers seek damages against international banks. It is also one of the first to be crafted as a conspiracy case.

The lawyers who filed the suit, Gary Osen and Tab Turner, were part of a team that tried an Anti-Terrorism Act case against Arab Bank earlier this year in Brooklyn. Jurors found Arab Bank liable for financing 24 Hamas attacks in Israel and the Palestinian Territories between 2001 and 2004.

That case linked Arab Bank specifically to wire transfers to alleged Hamas leaders and payments to Palestinians killed, injured and imprisoned in the anti-Israel uprising.

The new lawsuit does not assert a direct connection between the European banks and the allegedly Iran-directed attacks carried out in Iraq. Instead, the complaint claims that the banks indirectly facilitated the attacks by entering into agreements with Iranian banks to mask US dollar wire transactions sent through the United States.

“Each defendant understood that their conduct was part of a larger scheme engineered by Iran,” Osen said in an interview. At a minimum, he said, the banks were “deliberately indifferent” about the transactions they processed for Iran.

Osen said that through press accounts, declassified US military reports and documents posted by WikiLeaks, he built a file on attacks on US forces that were traceable to Iran. One of the boldest attacks took place in January 2007, when attackers dressed as American soldiers infiltrated a compound in Kerbala, Iraq, and killed five US military personnel.

Charlotte Freeman, whose husband Brian was one of the soldiers killed in Kerbala, said she and her mother-in-law decided to join the case to make a statement. “I never suspected these big banks would turn a blind eye,” she said. “Even if the case doesn’t get that far, at least the story is told. It needs to be exposed.”