Washington DC [USA], Mar 24 : American lawyer Larry Klayman has filed a USD 20 trillion lawsuit against China for the creation and the release of the novel coronavirus that has infected more than 334,000 people globally.
Klayman, his advocacy group Freedom Watch and Buzz Photos, a Texas company, filed the lawsuit in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas, alleging that the novel coronavirus was "designed by China to be a biological weapon of war", and that whether or not the country intended to release it, China violated "US law, international laws, treaties, and norms."
"Because China has agreed by treaty to outlaw such weapons, these actions cannot be official governmental actions of the People's Republic of China and are not subject to any possible claim of legal immunity from suit," the lawsuit said, as cited by Law and Crime.
It went on to allege that the purpose of maintaining the virus within the laboratory was to use it to "kill US citizens and other persons and entities in nations perceived to be an enemy of China."
The virus, which first originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan, has spread 189 countries or territories, infected more than 334,000 people and killed over 14,500, as per the latest data available on the World Health Orgsation website.
"COVID-19 is an extremely dangerous disease because it has an extremely aggressive nature, was designed to mutate from person to person, spreads very quickly and easily, no vaccine exists yet on account of it being a new disease, the means of transmission are not fully known with certainty, and treatments are only just being worked out, and the disease appears to be about ten times as deadly as the flu," the lawsuit read.
It said that the lawsuit was designed by China such as to be an effective and catastrophic biological warfare weapon to kill mass populations.
( With inputs from ANI )