The Sbarro bomber’s American saga: Ahlam Tamimi escaped Israel - US failed to bring her to justice

Twenty-five years after a bombing that killed an American teenager, her parents are still fighting for justice. Frimet and Arnold Roth's daughter, Malka Chana, was among those murdered in the Sbarro restaurant attack in Jerusalem in 2001. The perpetrator, Ahlam Tamimi, was released from Israeli prison in 2011 as part of a prisoner exchange.

Tamimi, an American citizen, has since been living openly in Jordan. The Roths have been petitioning U.S. authorities for 15 years to bring Tamimi to justice in an American court, citing a federal law that allows for the prosecution of terrorists who harm U.S. nationals abroad. This law, Section 2332a of Title 18 of the United States Code, can carry penalties of death or life imprisonment.

The Sbarro bombing also killed two other American citizens: Shoshana Yehudit Greenbaum, a pregnant teacher from New Jersey, and Chana Tova Chaya Nachenberg, who survived the initial attack but died in 2023 from her wounds after nearly 22 years in a coma. The Roths' pursuit of Tamimi has faced significant obstacles, encountering what they describe as obfuscation from powerful individuals in Israel, Jordan, and the U.S.

Their efforts gained momentum in 2012 when news emerged that Tamimi might host her own television show. This prompted the Roths, with the help of a lawyer, to travel to Washington D.C. to engage with American authorities. The U.S. Department of Justice had also taken up the case of another American victim, Kristine Luken, who was murdered in a separate stabbing attack.

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Because Americans had been murdered at Sbarro, we hoped that a rarely invoked federal law, Section 2332a of Title 18 of the United States Code, might apply to get Tamimi back behind bars in the US.