WASHINGTON — The family of a US citizen killed during an Iranian bombing campaign in Iraq’s Kurdistan region has filed a federal lawsuit against the government of Iran and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). 

Omar Mahmoudzadeh and at least 12 others were killed when Iran attacked Kurdish areas in neighboring Iraq with a barrage of ballistic missiles and drones on Sept. 28. The IRGC-claimed strikes targeted several Iranian Kurdish opposition groups that Tehran accused of fueling the protests over Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman who died in the custody of Iran's so-called morality police. 

The lawsuit filed Monday in the US District Court for the District of Columbia by Mahmoudzadeh’s wife and daughter seeks $300 million in punitive and $50 million in compensatory damages “for severe personal injuries and other irreparable harm” suffered as a result of Mahmoudzadeh’s extrajudicial killing and alleged acts of terrorism by Iran and its powerful Revolutionary Guards. 

The suit is filed under the terrorism exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which allows US victims to sue designated state sponsors of terrorism. Iran has been on the State Department's terrorism blacklist list since 1984, and the IRGC was labeled a foreign terrorist organization in 2019.