Moscow outraged by U.S. court ruling on Schneerson Library
MOSCOW. Jan 17 (Interfax) - The Russian Foreign Ministry is outraged by a Washington court ruling imposing a fine on Russia for failing to comply with a 2010 court order to turn over a collection of books, manuscripts and other religious documents known as the Schneerson Library to the Chabad organization in the U.S.
"It is outrageous that a Washington court has taken this unprecedented step fraught with most serious consequences as the imposition of a fine on a sovereign state," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.
"We have stated repeatedly that this ruling is exterritorial in nature, goes against international law and is legally null and void," it said.
"The Schneerson Collection was historically built on our country's territory, is the national heritage of all Russian people, and, as state property of the Russian Federation, enjoys jurisdictional immunity," the ministry said.
Part of the collection, which was built by Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Schneerson in the Russian Empire, was nationalized by Bolsheviks in 1918 and eventually joined the Russian State Library collection. Schneerson managed to take the other part of the collection out of the Soviet Union while emigrating in the 1930s. About 25,000 pages of manuscripts from the collection were later seized by the Nazis, then were regained by the Red Army and handed over to the Russian State Military Archive.
Royce Lamberth, a federal judge of the U.S. District Court in Washington, ruled on August 6, 2010 that the old Jewish books and manuscripts from the collection were held by the Russian State Library and the State Military Archive unlawfully and must be returned to the Chabad-Lubavitch organization currently based in New York.
The Russian Foreign Ministry responded then that the ruling was unlawful, as the collection "never left Russian territory and was nationalized, since the Schneerson family did not have legal inheritors. Therefore, the 'return' of these books to the U.S. is impossible in principle."
Moreover, the Foreign Ministry insisted that it is "the U.S. Hasidim who are supposed to return seven books from this collection to Russia, which were lent to them from the Russian State Library for two months in 1993 through the Library of Congress under the international interlibrary exchange system and have been unlawfully held for 16 years now."
Based on the U.S. court ruling in favor of the Hasidic organization, an attempt was made in 2011 to seize a collection of Russian icons being exhibited at the U.S. The awkward situation was settled somehow, but the Russian government had to suspend the organization of exhibitions in the U.S.
A U.S. district court in Washington ruled on January 16, 2013 to oblige Russia to pay $50,000 a day as a fine until the Schneerson Collection is returned to Chabad-Lubavitch.
