More than 16 years after the release of Lawrence Martin Jenco, who was held by Islamic radicals for nearly 19 months in Lebanon in the 1980s, and five years after he died of cancer in Illinois at age 61, a federal court in Washington is about to decide a suit by the Jenco family seeking hundreds of millions of dollars from the Islamic Republic of Iran for “financing and directing the captors,” reported the New York Times.
However, the paper said that because of arguments advanced by lawyers of the family of the late Roman Catholic priest, the court is facing a surprising question that ventures into complicated religious and cultural territory: Who should the courts consider to be the "family" of a Roman Catholic priest?
To tally damages, the Jenco family's lawyers urged the judge to consider the emotional ties that bound nieces and nephews to Father Jenco, who as a Catholic priest did not have children of his own.
"Aren't the children of a Catholic priest's brothers and sisters his alter-ego children?" one of the lawyers, Steven R. Perles, asked in an interview.
After a trial this spring, a decision is expected soon from Judge Royce C. Lamberth of Federal District Court – Albawaba.com
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