Here on APR Notebook, I've invited you to listen into my chats with actors and authors. Those talks are pretty light. Then there was my conversation with Alex Drueke, who spent 105 days as a POW in the hands of Russian forces after he volunteered to fight for Ukraine. That one was tough to listen to, and fair warning, here's another one. But hear me out. Genocide has been going on in part of the African nation of Sudan for years. The region I'm talking about is roughly the size of Spain. It's called Darfur. An estimated 2 million people have been killed there, but for some of the survivors, there has been justice, and an attorney who hails from Mobile made it possible. Kathryn Lee Boyd argued the case against the French bank BNP Paribas. It was accused of funding the mass killings in Darfur. Boyd won, and she's my guest next on APR Notebook.
PAT DUGGINS-- Kathryn Lee Boyd, thank you so much for joining me on APR Notebook.
KATHRYN LEE BOYD-- Thank you, Pat. It's an honor. It's a privilege. Happy to be here.
PAT-- So anybody tuning in, I really wouldn't blame them if they were to think, "Oh, great, Pat and Mrs. Boyd are going to talk about genocide. Why don't I just jump off a tall building while we're at it? Okay, but but but there is a story about justice being done. How much time do you reassure people there is as much of a happily ever after that you're going to get out of a case like that?
KATHRYN-- Yeah, well, the the quest for justice against the the world's most vicious bullies is not done. It's a it's an ongoing quest, and it's a two steps forward, three steps back many times. Although we have had so many encouraging victories along the way since I've started in the in the in in the sort of the the industry of human rights litigation, which is really very new in the world of law, and we've had so many victories and yet some setbacks because those bullies, you know, the world's worst offenders of state sponsors of terrorism and massive human rights violations and genocide violators-they are well funded. They're well funded. They hire the biggest, baddest lawyers that reflect their clients, and they usually have unlimited funds. It feels like, and victims, of course, of these kinds of crimes are at a huge disadvantage in in our system of justice.
PAT-- How did a nice person like you from Mobile wind up, you know, for for 30 years fighting these kinds of cases?
KATHRYN--You know, I I don't know. I like to say, and other people have said in my family, I was born with the justice gene, and you know it when you have it. You can't get away from it. I was arguing for the rights of everyone in the family and everyone outside the family, and taking in every stray dog, and arguing with my parents on every turn of how people were being mistreated and needed to, we all needed to straighten up down there in Lower Alabama.
PAT-- Was there a certain case that you saw as a young person that said, "Daggon it, that's it, I'm in.
KATHRYN-- Yeah, I was in the law library, international law library in law school. I was very privileged to go to the Harvard Law School, and I was there, and I was-I just ran across this case called Filartiga v. Pena-Irala.. It was 1980, and it really is sort of the first case in which a court in the United States applied international law to a torturer and and found liability in U.S. courts. I didn't know this was even possible. We hadn't learned it. It was brand new, and I was I was in the '80s, so this had just happened, and I it just blew my mind. I got tingles. I said, "This is what I'm going to do, and that was the application of the Alien Tort Statute for the first time in 200 years. It had been on the books since the 1700s. It used to enforce human rights in our courts, and that was in the Second Circuit, where I am right now working on my big case involving Sudan genocide. And I thought, okay, that's it. I'm done. This is what I'm going to do. I'm going to find any way I can to work in that in that area.
PAT-- For the non-lawyer out there, when you say, "Okay, I'm going to do a court case regarding genocide, you might automatically, being an amateur, think, "Oh, we're going to go against the goons with the guns. When in reality, as you mentioned earlier, you're going after the money. So why that strategy?
KATHRYN-- There's trouble when it comes to suing governments. Governments are protected by immunities, by sovereignty, by by national security issues. Those come up in all these cases. The State Department, you know, there's there's there's there's a lot of foreign affairs, and foreign affairs aren't always the court's purview. Those are foreign affairs is is our president and the Congress, both together. By the way, so you know we have the courts have to defer a lot, and there's a strict rules against suing governments, and then enforcing judgments against governments is very dicey, and our courts aren't really willing to do that. But we have many cases. One, the first case I ever worked on as a baby lawyer was against Argentina, the Guerasuccia. It's called in Spanish, the Dirty War against where so many were killed in Argentina by the junta. So we had a case in the United States involving that, and that was one of my first cases against Argentina for the uninitiated, including myself. No, that that that was that was the violence that occurred right around the time of the Falklands conflict. Exactly.
PAT-- And you mentioned Darfur. Let's get into that. I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna mess this up, but let me let me set it up, and then we'll turn it over to you. You want a major court case regarding victims of genocide from Darfur. So again, for the uninitiated, let me know if I get this wrong. Darfur is a chunk of land about the size of Spain in western Sudan in East Central Africa, where at last count about 400,000 people were murdered. Now, instead, again going after the guys with the guns, you went after a French bank, PNB Paribas, that the court found that provided backing to the Sudanese government to do all the killings, did I get anything wrong on that?
KATHRYN-- You did not—except-- it was more like 2 million have been slaughtered by the Islamist government in Sudan on ethnic on ethnic grounds of you know Black African indigenous people being killed by those who are consider themselves Arab Islamist government, and that was the Al Bashir militaristic government. So more like 2 million. It was a massive slaughter, and it became, of course, it was called a genocide by Colin Powell, and everything else was was right on. So it was a it was a massive. He Bashir was in power until 2019, he came in in in 1989. So, but you know, these a lot of these bullies don't have the funds that Germany had in the Holocaust. They this was a poor country, and the one thing they had was oil in the ground, but they didn't have it out of the ground. And oil is sold with dollars. It's called U.S. petrodollars, right? Might have heard that. So the government of the United States really focused on keeping those petrodollars out of the hands of this monster. Got to have money to kill people. Got to pay your salaries of the. Got to buy Antonovs to drop bombs, barrel bombs on the villages. You got to have guns. You got to have MiGs and helicopters, and you know, cost money. Well, they didn't have the money, so but they had a willing conspirator, and that was BNP Paribas Bank that was making a quite a bit of money by providing those U.S. dollars illegally, violating U.S. sanctions, and Sudan was able to get the oil out of the ground in 1999, 2000, able to ramp up its military expenditures by 1000s of percent, and to kill more people. So until it got to genocide, which is the cultural killing of a of an entire people population of people.
PAT-- So since you made your case against BNP Parabas, as I understand now, the survivors or the families of the victims they get to go after PNB Parabas, and I've heard this could be billions.
KATHRYN-- Well, yeah, it very well could be. the estimated number of now these are U.S. people; these are our neighbors now. Okay, these are not people over in Sudan. They fled to the United States. They came in legally as refugees and asylees. That's the clients, and there's about 23,000 of them. They live all over the United States, even in Alabama, and a lot in Atlanta. And they they they're they're they're mostly citizens now. So, of 23,000, if you just do the basic math, and you you know, and you if you think about the awards for things like torture and and being having your family members shot in front of you and your children beheaded in front of you, and that that's the kind of atrocities we're talking about.You know, torture beyond anything you could imagine in places called ghost houses that are as scary as they sound. Mass rape, mass rape was a big one in this genocide. So, if you imagine the kind of compensation that a jury would award, and in our case, they awarded $7 million to each person, each one of our plaintiffs. Well, you just do the math. That's billions. So that's the potential liability. The bank has fought the victims since the beginning. They didn't fight the criminal allegations; they pled guilty, so they're a felon, convicted felon in the United States. But they fought the victims since the beginning, and we'll keep up with you obviously as this goes along.
PAT-- Let's shift gears onto another case here, and let me start it off with a true story. Mrs. Duggins and I, one time, we were in Paris having lunch, and we were seated next to this nice British couple with their children, and we were chatting, and we mentioned, "Oh, we'd like to visit London sometime and see the British Museum.” And the father leaned over at that point, true story, and he said, "Oh yes, we only steal the very best.” And I'm kind of like, "Oh, then we got back to our quiche. That was the end of it. Anyway, this brings me to a case that you led regarding the genocide in Armenia back during the First World War. So, again, for the uninitiated, which was me until very recently, can you very briefly describe what are the Zeytoun Gospels?
KATHRYN-- These Armenian Gospels were these Zeytoun Gospels were in an Armenian Orthodox Church, and it was from the 13th century. The monks were the Armenian monks in the Orthodox Church were creating these beautiful gold leaf manuscripts that led into the four Gospels. They were like they're called canon tables. They're absolutely stunningly beautiful. They're in the they were in the John Paul Getty Museum, and they were attached originally in the church in Armenia. I mean, excuse me, in Turkey at the time of the genocide, they were attached to a larger Bible, the Zeytoun Bible in Zeytoun, and they were they have all these mystic qualities that that they you know legend since the 13th century. There were these Zeytoun Gospels were paraded through the streets and had all these metaphysical qualities. So they're they're very meaningful, culturally meaningful, and that's key. This is cultural property to the Armenian people.
PAT-- Well, it's it's it's the getting from A to B that kind of gets me now. If I if I if I if my research is wrong, tell me. But what I read was that there was a family named the Atenians that apparently got access to the Bible, ripped the eight pages out, went through Ellis Island, hid those pages in Boston for what 70 years, and then the Getty showed up.
KATHRYN-- Well, no, they were they were they were displayed at the Pierpont Morgan. Somehow they made it to a show in New York at the library, and that's where the director saw on them. The curator, one of the curators for the Getting said, we got to have these. Now, the Atayian family. I, my history, if I remember, was that a Turk, actually a Turk, had ripped out the pages, and during the genocide, and this the the family started out with you know trying to salvage them and save them fleeing, and yet they're so valuable. Just kept them in the family. We have this whole body of Holocaust era restitution law that was going well, and so we built this Armenian case. The Armenian lawyer that I worked with, Mr. Vartesia Gayan, asked me to litigate this case, and and he had first approached the Getty to have him return no. So here's the lawsuit. I draft the complaint. I did a lot of research on how these pages could have been could have been you know detached, and we sued the Getty for those for those cannon tables. Great story. When we we go into state court, and I'm the first case they move to dismiss the complaint on statutes of limitations. And there's a huge Armenian population in Los Angeles. This is and so the lawyer that had hired me to work with him on the case and to do the litigation, went around the town and got all these babushkas and Armenian people that were just going to the grocery store and put them in the van and brought them to court. So we had the whole population of the Armenian, and every lawyer says, you know, you never get a rabbi or a priest, you know, as a witness. But this time, I had the Armenian priest next to me, and with the big cross, and it was just it was just such a beautiful sight. I got to say, you know, these gospels are the patriarchy, are the patrimony of the Armenian people, and they were right there in the court, and so we won that hearing and moved on to actually settle the case after after. After I deposed the the director of the John Paul Getty Museum about notes that he had had during the purchase, and in those notes was a key phrase that he had written down when he “purchased Armenian genocide.” He wrote those words.
PAT-- Oops. So no, again, correct me if I'm wrong on this. the the final agreement, the final settlement of what happened was that okay that the Getty Museum acknowledges that the Zeytoun Gospel pages that they had belong to the Armenian Orthodox Church, but the Armenian Orthodox Church then donates them back to the Getty where they are right now. Am I close?
KATHRYN-- Display with a, you know, an idea that there would be shared that they would, you know, have sharing with the modern Adirond, and there. I mean, the the terms are actually, you know, confidential. So there's there there are more terms, but but yes, right now you can see the gospels, and and it really it did make sense. Pat, the J.P. Morgan, I mean, the the you know the John Paul Getty Museum has all the technology to to preserve 13th century manuscripts. The Montenadaran in Armenia, which is a very you know emerging developing country, did not. So it made sense to preserve them. Not to mention, like I said, the largest Armenian population is not Yerevan, which is the capital of Armenia. It's Los Angeles. So, you know what? What a it was really quite special. I thought that, and you know.
PAT-- You're listening to the national award-winning APR Notebook on Alabama Public Radio. I'm Pat Duggins. My guest is Catherine Lee Boyd. She's an attorney who grew up in Mobile. Boyd has spent around three decades specializing in human rights cases, especially ones involving genocide. You just heard how she won justice for survivors of genocide in the African region of Darfur, and how she fought for the Armenian Orthodox Church to recover the Zaytun Gospels that were stolen during the Armenian genocide in World War One. Next, we're going to talk about another court case. In that one, she took on the Vatican.
KATHRYN—It was the most astounding argument. You can actually find it, I think, on YouTube. But the the Ninth Circuit Court heard the case, the appeal of a dismissal, basically on something you and I talked about, which is the the political question. These are not for courts. This is a Vatican Bank, and what's interesting is when I showed up to the argument, it was packed. It was packed, but it was packed also with interestingly that day that the Chinese Supreme Court was visiting, and and so the panel, which I remember it was Judge Trott presiding. The panel was very, very interesting. Just, just really allowed me to have much more time than usually we get. And I happen also to that time be in academia. I was a professor, a tenured law professor at Pepperdine, and professors get a little bit more deference than lawyers, in my opinion, having been both at the court, so I got I really got to have a great conversation about what was really going on, and and why this was not political question. This was what I called garden variety property claims, and the court adopted that that language. It's become sort of a phrase, garden variety. And I even got a letter from the court, which is rare, saying thank you for your argument. We was very helpful in in deciding the case. But it was that political question doctrine case. I mean, it sounds very legal. Has gone on to have impact, even though that case was lost ultimately on on immunity, sovereign immunity that we talked about, but but the political question doctrine has has created some good law for us throughout the cases that have been brought since then.
KATHRYN-- Well, making arguments in front of a judge is one thing, but I mean the fact that you had such a how shall I say it August audience as well did that make any? Did that make any difference? Like any more self?
KATHRYN-- Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. I think you know the judges usually, and my own kids have seen this. I've taken them to see some of the arguments when they were little. They'll just cut you off and tell you to sit down and shut up. I mean, just cut you off. You know, interrupt, and they can do that, and that's fine. You know, I don't want to hear about that. Okay, you know, you said that they can really, you know, put the lawyer to task. That was not going to really happen with the, as you say, August audience, right? We're going to be on our best behavior. All of us were on our best behavior. I think I put on a show. That's what I love to do. I mean, I. Love to do that. That's also part of my personality. I really did like to, you know, to really, you know, to to take this take the stage and and show off what we had and and make I think the best case. And it was it was it was a great day. It was a really great day.
PAT-- Among your other accomplishments, you also helped write the book “Seeking Justice After the Holocaust,” and I was I was kind of curious because, like, and again, in pop culture, which is like you know, for for an outsider looking in, that that that's where I start. Is that a lot of times in motion pictures, for example, I'll be like, okay, a Nazi steals a rare painting from a victim of the Holocaust, but the good guy gets it back and justice is done. You were talking earlier about how the Holocaust was was obviously you know a crime against humanity in terms of like the matter of of of of the of the death camps, but also the theft not only of art, but a whole bunch of other stuff too.
KATHRYN-- Oh yeah, I mean art was big. Hitler was considered himself an artist, you know. He had you know some of the. I remember taking my kids to the Norton Simon Museum in in Pasadena and showing them paintings that were hanging there that were we were litigating over that hung in Hermann Goering's you know Berlin house that were stolen from a Jewish art collector and European Jews had a lot of art so, so art was art. Art is one of those things that you know the art recovery movement has has has legs and it's it's sexy and it has a lot of talk about it. But you know the Ustasha Treasury were were gold. You remember gold teeth were being pulled out of the Jewish victims and you know this this there was so much money being stolen from in gross ways, and and and the Swiss bank accounts. Oh my God! Talk about Swiss banks having been held to account already in our courts for all of the Jewish wealthy when they were fleeing Europe, when the Nazis were you know on the move, were putting their money in the Swiss banks, and when their heirs showed up to collect after the Holocaust was over and the war had ended, you know the Swiss banks said, "No, you need a death certificate. You know, okay. Well, Auschwitz wasn't giving those out. You know, they were horrible, and we had, you know, they sued. We sued over that. My co-counsel in the BNP case was one of those lawyers sued the Swiss banks and massive amounts of money. These are, and the only Swiss asylum seeker ever in the United States was the was the 27 year old guard that saw all of these these Jewish account records that were sitting. Where were they sitting in the basement next to the shredder to be shredded, I mean this is these are the theft was massive, and anyone who could like I said there's money to be made in many different during the genocide you know after the genocide the interest on those accounts countless insurance companies have refused to pay out insurance proceeds that we've had to sue for the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide, and you know because people we're all the same. I mean, people see something coming where they're targeted, and what do you do? You start trying to prepare for the future, and your heirs, even if you don't make it out, maybe they will and get the money out. So, but yeah, there's there's it's a it's the massive massive theft, not just art, and those Swiss bank accounts, of course, settled back in 2000 for a billion. And you know, there's a recent case right now accusing the Swiss for hiding some more of those accounts.
PAT-- How much is left to do on that? I mean, are we making any progress on that in terms of rectifying the wrongs?
KATHRYN-- You know, part of that book that you mentioned was a report card on really, and that book really brought in the 47 countries that included the Eastern Bloc former Soviet countries that had never participated in restitution, obviously under communism, but they did sign the Turezin Declaration in 2009, and that's when these countries started to make commitments to restitution. Think Poland, right? That's where most of the European Jews were. That's where the money was stolen. Romania, Hungary. So you know that's a report card for what the restitution has resulted in, both in domestically and internationally. And it's it's a it's a really I think comprehensive and you know all thanks to the the my co-author Michael Basler, who is the leading Holocaust and you know genocide scholar in the in the world, and a dear friend, and then two former students of ours who are great human rights lawyers in their own. But to to really put together this report card was you know amazing and. It doesn't show well. I'm not going to give it an A for any country. I mean, probably Germany maybe has done the most out of necessity, but certainly the Eastern Bloc countries have have very low grades because their systems are not in place for due process, foreigners and and especially maybe Jewish or even just foreigners don't don't get their court systems are very developing still with communist you know history and so we're in we're in the case against Romania based on you know the theft of a of a film company from clients that of mine in Armenian in in Los Angeles. So the and they tried for 20 years to go through the courts of Romania for who which had established restitution. Nope, didn't work. You know, you if you've ever read the book The Trial by Franz Kafka, then that's what the experience was like for an American in a remaining court system, and that's the same with Polish clients that we have, and so it's not a wasn't a good report card, but that was only 2009 that Theresire Declaration was signed by these countries, and the movement continues, still continues. Lots to do, lots to do.
PAT-- You've been at this for decades. Does it? Does some of the stuff still shock you?
KATHRYN-- Yes. Yeah, I. I'm always. Yeah, I think the stubborn, the stiff-necked stubbornness of of evil just does, and of those that conspire, the non-government, you know, the the non, the not the ones who pull the gun. It's, I mean, isn't Dietrich Bonhoeffer? Someone says, you know, evil is in the silence of men who watch evil and say nothing, you know. I mean, that astounds me. Just the silence in the face of evil is evil. I think that's the quote that astounds me, and yet it's so easy to do, especially when the money's flowing. And then, of course, the atrocities themselves. I'll never get used to that. I have been told I might have secondary trauma and PTSD from hearing hearing the stories of unimaginable cruelty that animals would never never commit against another animal. So we humans come up with just the most unspeakable, unthinkable crimes against humanity, and that's person to person. I can't not if once I stop being surprised by that, then you know I guess I've kind of lost some of my humanity. But no, it's shocking and horrifying and gripping that that evil.
PAT-- In the APR newsroom. You know we work with University of Alabama journalism students, so I'm constantly thinking about like you know passing along the torch to younger generations. On the off chance that there are any law students out there listening in. Make your pitch on on why you know it was worth it to you to to pursue this for as long as you have.
KATHRYN-- Oh, you've such a perfect timing for this question. I just had the opportunity to talk to a young lady on her way to law school from Fairhope, Alabama, that is 100% about human rights, and she wants to be a human rights lawyer. And we talked about the path and the many different ways she can do this, and what she needs to do on day one when she shows up at Washington and Lee Law School. And yes, this is-I will tell you-there is such a great path right now. And people like me, the old guard-not the oldest guard, but the old guard-we are ready to pass that baton. We need more people that are energized. The law schools, unlike my time in law school, there's human rights classes and programs. Take them all, but also really work on those skills: speaking, arguing, litigating, writing, because you're going to be up against the best of the best, and we just need we need really good lawyers with their heart in the right place, and and do that do not stand by silent in the face of evil because some of these lawyers that take the other side, I I have to say that would be hard for me as a lawyer to stand by, and so we're looking for for for for kids with a true moral compass that have their head screwed on right, which we have a lot of them in the state of Alabama. Kids raised right, ready to do the right thing. I certainly went to school with them, and they're they're heading to law school right now, as I said. So love to love to be more involved, even at the university, to to teach. You know, I speak to students all the time in their classes in the in the law schools. So happy to do that anytime.
PAT--- Katherine Lee Boyd, thank you so much for talking to me.
KATHRYN-- Thank you, Pat. It was a privilege.
PAT—The now national award-winning APR notebook is available on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts. The student interns in the APR newsroom are Alexis Baroni, Bella Stiert, J.D. Kazaya, Caroline Harrington, Michael Green, Addison Phelps, Alex Schoenfeld and Jamel Jackson. I'm Pat Duggins. We'll see you next time on APR Notebook.
