TEHRAN A Tehran court of common pleas has been assigned to handle complaints against the United States.

Some U.S. courts have issued rulings against Iran for several times during the recent years.

The Judiciary spokesman Hossein Mir-Mohammad-Sadeqi said that Iranians can file lawsuits with the Tehran court when foreign countries have broken international conventions, causing prejudice to Iranian nationals.

Referring to the 1953 U.S.-backed coup, which toppled the government of Iranian nationalist prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, he said, "The Bench 3 of Tehran's Court of Common Pleas is ready to receive such lawsuits. Sadeqi stressed that foreign governments would be held liable for compensation for causing damage to Iranian nationals.

The move has comes after former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani on Friday called on the powerful Judiciary to putt into effect a parliamentary bill which allows Iranian victims of U.S. interference to sue the United States for damages.

Last November, the Majlis voted unanimously to allow courts to impose punitive damages on the United States for terrorist acts. The move came after the U.S. government agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to victims of what Washington calls Iranian state-sponsored terrorism.

"I am surprised that why Iran is staying put and does nothing vis-a-vis the U.S. baseless allegations? The Americans routinely form tribunals against Iran under unfounded pretexts to pickpocket millions of dollars from the latter's (frozen) assets," Rafsanjani told thousands of worshipers attending the weekly Muslim Friday prayers at the compounds of Tehran University.

In a latest case, a U.S. federal judge has ordered Iran to pay the damages to 70-year-old university professor Thomas Sutherland, in the seventh such case against Iran.

He said the families of the 290 people killed after the shooting down of an Iranian airliner over the Persian Gulf by a U.S. Cruiser 13 years ago and the families of the four Iranian diplomats kidnapped in Lebanon 19 years ago should file lawsuit against the United States.

Washington says the ship's crew mistook the airliner for an attacking Iranian fighter plane and has paid compensation to the victims' families, but Tehran claims the attack was deliberate.