US Supreme Court Declines to Hear Chabad Case To Sue Russia Over Frierdiker Rebbe’s Library
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday steered clear of a long-running dispute that is testing when foreign governments can be sued in American courts over property taken abroad, declining to hear a U.S.-based Jewish group’s bid to recover a collection of sacred manuscripts once taken by the Nazis and now held in Russia.
The court turned down an appeal by Agudas Chasidei Chabad of a lower court’s determination that Russia enjoyed immunity under a provision of U.S. federal law because the property at issue — a religious library and archive — was taken abroad and remains there. The administration of President Donald Trump had also asked the court to take up the case.
Agudas Chasidei Chabad, a Brooklyn-based umbrella group for the Orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch movement, sued Russia in 2004, claiming ownership of a collection of books and manuscripts that ended up with the Russian government after being left in a warehouse for safekeeping in the early 1900s. The Soviet Army later seized the materials from the Nazis during World War Two.
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