Chabad Wants Russia Sanctioned

by Zoe Tillman, Legal Times (blog)

Eight months after the Russian Federation was ordered to turn over tens of thousands of pages of texts seized from Jewish religious leaders during the early 20th century, the books, manuscripts and other sacred documents are nowhere to be found.

Chabad-Lubavitch, an orthodox sect of Judaism, filed a motion on Monday in Washington federal court asking for civil contempt sanctions to be placed against the Russian government.

Chabad is fighting for the return of approximately 12,000 books and manuscripts seized during the Bolshevik Revolution and Russian Civil War in the early 20th century and 25,000 pages of handwritten texts stolen by Nazis during World War II and then taken by Russian soldiers once the war was over.

The defendants were served with a notice of the order, according to Chabad’s motion for sanctions filed yesterday, but “both Chabad and the Court continue to wait empty-handed for delivery of the Library and Archive.”

Chabad is asking the court to place significant monetary sanctions on the Russian government, noting that civil contempt sanctions are not punitive and are meant to force action.

The motion cites previous cases in which the court levied sanctions as high as $500,000 per day to force compliance with court orders.

In previous filings, the defendants have stated that diplomacy, not the courts, is the proper realm to settle the dispute.

Chabad’s attorney, Nathan Lewin of Washington’s Lewin & Lewin, said in a phone interview this morning that a recent appeals court decision upholding monetary contempt sanctions against the Democratic Republic of Congo set the stage for Chabad to file its motion yesterday.

“As the D.C. Circuit said… you can enter a contempt order and that’s certainly within the court’s power,” he said. “We’re just going to move ahead aggressively.”