US judge orders Iran pay $1.45 billion to family of ex-FBI agent presumed dead

Iran has been ordered to pay Robert Levinson's family $1.35 billion in punitive damages and $107 million in compensatory damages.
US Daniel Levinson (L) shows a picture of his father, ex-FBI agent Robert Levinson, holding his grandson Ryan during a press conference with his mother Christine at the Swiss embassy in Tehran, 22 December 2007. The wife of the former agent missing in Iran since March said today she has received "no answers" about his fate at the end of her trip to the Islamic republic in search of her husband, who Washington says went missing on a visit to the Iranian island of Kish. The Tehran government reiterated earlie
Daniel Levinson (L) shows a picture of his father, ex-FBI agent Robert Levinson, holding his grandson Ryan, during a press conference at the Swiss Embassy in Tehran, Iran, Dec. 22, 2007. At right is Robert Levinson's wife, Christine. - BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP via Getty Images
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Al-Monitor Staff

A federal judge in Washington has ruled that Iran must pay $1.45 billion in damages to the family of a retired FBI agent who vanished 13 years ago in Iran.  

Robert Levinson, the longest held hostage in American history, disappeared on Iran’s Kish Island in March 2007 in what the US government initially claimed was a private business trip. In 2013, The Associated Press revealed that CIA analysts had recruited Levinson and sent him on a mission inside Iran.   

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