NEW YORK, April 18 (Reuters) - BNP Paribas was

ordered by a U.S. judge on Thursday to face a lawsuit accusing

the French bank of helping Sudan's government commit genocide

between 1997 and 2011 by providing banking services that

violated American sanctions.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in Manhattan found

"too many facts" showing a relationship between BNP Paribas'

financing and human rights abuses perpetrated by the government.

He called it premature to decide whether it was reasonable

to hold the bank responsible for causing some of those abuses,

which according to the plaintiffs included murder, mass rape and

torture, or whether it could have foreseen them.

The proposed class action was brought by U.S. residents who

had fled non-Arab indigenous black African communities in South

Sudan, Darfur, and the Nuba Mountains in central Sudan. They are

seeking unspecified damages.

A spokesman for BNP Paribas declined to comment.

The bank had in 2014 agreed to plead guilty and pay an $8.97

billion penalty to settle U.S. charges it transferred billions

of dollars for Sudanese, Iranian and Cuban entities subject to

economic sanctions.

While many banks have been accused of aiding in human rights

abuses by providing banking services, BNP Paribas' guilty plea

was the first by a global bank to large-scale violations of U.S.

economic sanctions, the Department of Justice said at the time.

Hellerstein said the bank's admission that its employees

recognized its role in giving Sudanese entities access to the

U.S. banking system meant it could not now argue differently.

The U.S. government recognized the Sudanese conflict as a

genocide in 2004.

Thursday's decision came in a lawsuit originally filed in

2016.

A different judge dismissed the case in 2018, but a federal

appeals court revived it in 2019.

Hellerstein dismissed claims for punitive damages, saying

they were not available under applicable Swiss law. The other

judge had ruled that Swiss law governed BNP Paribas' liability.

The case is Kashef et al v BNP Paribas et al, U.S. District

Court, Southern District of New York, No. 16-03228.