New York, New York. Saudi Arabia has always denied that it was involved in the attacks that left almost 3,000 dead. But American lawyers now believe Trump’s engagement with Riyadh has created a situation whereby Saudi Arabia may be tempted to settle.
If they are going to make billions of dollars out of infrastructure deals and the Royal family is preserved, maybe some wise person is going to say ‘we have to get out of this 9/11 mess’. Because it’s not going away, is the feeling back in New York.
The issue is hugely controversial. The filing of a lawsuit against Saudi Arabia was only possible after the passing earlier this year of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) a piece of legislation that allows Americans to sue foreign states in US courts. Barack Obama had opposed the law, but the Senate overturned his veto of the legislation.
The suit, which was filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York and will be heard US District Judge George Daniels, seeks unspecified monetary damages. It claims that Saudi Arabia supported al-Qaeda in four critical ways.
The court action names several Saudi charities that were phony fronts and ran terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. It says the Saudi Arabia directly funded Osama Bin Laden’s terror group, and supported it by providing the hijackers with passports.The Royal family of Saudi Arabia had spent millions of dollars lobbying against the law, and even now trying to have it modified
Perhaps most damning is the suit names Saudi officials in the US who worked with the hijackers in the 18 months leading up to the attacks, “providing them with money, cover, advice, contacts, transportation, assistance with language and US culture, identification, access to pilot training and other material support and resources”.
Riyadh has long existed as a source of radical, extremist Islam, something that both the US and UK have been happy to exploit, or either look the other way, when it has suited them. Looking the other way according to this court action, got 3000 Americans killed and over a million plus other people world wide in the collateral damage that followed.