Discovery phase will focus on two Saudis in southern California accused of aiding hijackers who attacked Pentagon
By Brian P. McGlinchey
Flight 77 Hijacker Nawaf al-Hazmi
U.S. District Judge George Daniels has rejected Saudi Arabia’s motion to be removed as a defendant in a civil suit in which thousands of 9/11 family members, survivors and insurers allege Saudi government officials and agents supported the al Qaeda plot that killed 2,996 people, injured more than 6,000 others and caused billions of dollars in damage to businesses and property.
From a Saudi public relations perspective, the timing of the decision is particularly inopportune: Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman is in the midst of an aggressive two-week tour of the United States aimed at rehabilitating the kingdom’s image. Continue reading →
Law allowing 9/11 families to sue Saudi Arabia “poses no risk of exposing U.S. service members to lawsuits in foreign courts”
By Brian P. McGlinchey
William S. Dodge
As Saudi lobbyists continue to fly U.S. military veterans to Washington to oppose a recently-passed law that cleared the way for 9/11 families and victims to sue the kingdom for its alleged assistance to the hijackers, an expert on international law says the principal argument motivating the veterans’ participation is false.
Lobbyists are persuading veterans to call for the amendment or repeal of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) by claiming that, if other countries reciprocate and pass similar laws, individual military service members and veterans will be exposed to lawsuits in foreign courts. Continue reading →
Co-chair of congressional inquiry into 9/11 aids investigative journalist’s FOIA case against FBI
At a federal court hearing in Miami on Tuesday, former U.S. senator and Florida governor Bob Graham was seated at the plaintiff’s table in a case pitting a journalist against the FBI in a fight for transparency about the bureau’s investigation of a Saudi family that suddenly left its upscale Sarasota home shortly before the 9/11 attacks. Continue reading →
Undermined by the U.S. government’s refusal to share everything it knows about the September 11 attacks, the pursuit of justice by 9/11 family members and survivors could be stopped in its tracks within the next 90 days.
In a courtroom just minutes from the World Trade Center, lawyers for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia last Thursday asked Judge George Daniels to release the kingdom from a lawsuit seeking to hold it liable for aiding the 9/11 hijackers.
Representing Saudi Arabia, attorney Michael Kellogg said the victims have failed to provide “admissible, concrete, competent evidence” of Saudi Arabia’s complicity in the attacks.
Meanwhile, a 28-page chapter from a 2002 joint congressional intelligence inquiry that might tip the scales of justice in the plaintiffs’ favor remains out of reach, thanks to President Obama’s reluctance to declassify it.
Sean Carter, who represents the families and survivors, told New York’s PIX11 News, “The nature of Saudi support of al Qaeda remains classified at this point…it’s an issue that is featured in a whole range of intelligence documents…there is no real reason for them to be remain classified this many years out.”
Former Senator Bob Graham
The 28 pages detail specific sources of financial support for the hijackers and, according to former Senator Bob Graham, “point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier” of the attacks that killed 2,977 people. Graham and many others who’ve read the 28 pages insist there is no national security justification for the secrecy.
Saudi Arabia’s attorneys claim the 9/11 Commission Report exonerated the kingdom, a notion that’s refuted by, among others, commission member Bob Kerrey. In a sworn statement submitted for the suit last year, the former Nebraska senator wrote, “To the contrary, significant questions remain unanswered concerning the possible involvement of Saudi government institutions…and evidence relating to the plausible involvement of possible Saudi government agents in the September 11th attacks has never been fully pursued.”
The debate over the commission’s conclusion may be rendered moot with the release of the 28 pages: Congressman Walter Jones, who is leading the declassification drive in the House of Representatives, told the New Yorker “those 28 pages tell a story that has been completely removed from the 9/11 (Commission) Report.”
Will Judge Daniels “Connect the Dots”?
According to Michael D. Goldhaber, writing for The American Lawyer, Thursday’s courtroom exchanges emphasized a February 2000 meeting at the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles between alleged San Diego-based Saudi agent Omar al Bayoumi and embassy staffer Fahad al Thumairy. Plaintiffs attorneys and many observers point to that meeting as evidence of Saudi ties to the 9/11 plot.
Flight 77 Hijacker Nawaf al Hazmi
Immediately after the meeting, al Bayoumi went to a restaurant where he said he just happened to befriend 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar, who had only days earlier arrived in the United States. (According to Graham’s book, “Intelligence Matters,” before leaving San Diego for Los Angeles that day, al Bayoumi told at least one person he was going to pick up visitors.)
Al Bayoumi proceeded to help the two move to San Diego, initially hosting them in his own home. He helped them find an apartment, paid their first two months rent and introduced them to a network of associates that included Anwar al Awlaki, who would become a prominent al Qaeda figure before dying in a U.S. drone strike in 2011.
Al Bayoumi’s wife served as a conduit for cashiers checks routed from a Saudi princess, and al Bayoumi himself received a dramatic, temporary raise at his no-show cover job coinciding with his generous sponsorship of the pair. On 9/11, al Hazmi and al Mihdhar hijacked American Airlines Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon.
Flight 77 Hijacker Khalid al Mihdhar
That mountain of circumstantial evidence, however, might not be enough to dissuade Judge Daniels from dropping Saudi Arabia from the suit. According to Goldhaber, Judge Daniels challenged the plaintiffs’ attorneys on exactly what was said at al Bayoumi’s meeting at the Saudi consulate, asking, “What’s the factual basis for you to allege that when al Thumairy met with al Bayoumi he said, ‘Give lodging to the hijackers, assist them and give financial support to the hijackers so that they can carry out the 9/11 attacks?’”
Summing the situation, Goldhaber writes, “The quest for historical truth threatens to founder on the judge’s futile desire for direct knowledge of espionage….This case ain’t going to trial against Saudi unless Judge Daniels is willing to connect the dots. The irony is that Daniels already entered a $6 billion default judgment against Iran on far weaker evidence.” (Indeed, even the word “evidence” seems too generous in the context of that case.)
Judge Daniels said he would render his decision within 90 days.
Heightened Urgency for Declassification Effort
Last summer, President Obama tasked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to review the 28 pages for potential declassification. With a year passing since that order, and with the clock ticking on Judge Daniels’ self-imposed deadline, citizens, journalists and legislators should all be asking the White House one simple question: What’s taking so long?
At The Litigation Daily, Michael D. Goldhaber weighs in with a very thorough and, for a complex and serious topic, very readable overview of the latest developments in the legal action titled “In re Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001,” which consolidates several suits against Saudi interests on behalf of more than 6,500 survivors and family members as well as various companies, including insurers and Cantor Fitzgerald.
Chief among those latest developments is an amended complaint filed on September 15 by Philadelphia firm Cozen O’Connor. Goldhaber calls it “a lively, 156-page narrative (that) reads as a prequel to the 9/11 Commission Report, and as a much-needed corrective.”
As Goldhaber describes, the complaint’s 9/11 prequel extends centuries before 2001:
The 9/11 Commission Report starts with the biography of Osama Bin Laden. The new complaint, whose filing was anticipated by Lawrence Wright, and nimbly noted by Chris Mondics and Daniel Fisher, goes back to 1744. That was the year the founder of the House of Saud forged a long-term alliance with a purist Muslim cleric named al Wahhab, who believed in eradicating deviant beliefs by force. Internal challenges to the House of Saud’s legitimacy in 1979, and again in 1991-93, led the princes to cede greater money and power to the Wahhabi clerisy (the Ulema). The Ulema have allegedly supported worldwide jihad, beginning in Afghanistan and running via the Balkans to Lower Manhattan, through Saudi state charities and the “Islamic Affairs Departments” of Saudi embassies. Their alleged love for terrorists has come in the form of both money and, for at least two hijackers, logistical support.
Goldhaber also notes that “allegations against Saudi Arabia in the original 2003 complaint were necessarily thin because the pertinent 28 pages of the report by Congress’ joint inquiry into intelligence surrounding 9/11 have been controversially classified, inspiring the movement 28pages.org.”
In addition to explaining the complex and ongoing legal battle over the extent to which sovereign immunity protects Saudi Arabia from 9/11 claims, Goldhaber summarizes the key points in the complaint, including various threads linking Saudi Arabia and the 9/11 terrorists. While many of the threads noted in the complaint pass through Omar al Bayoumi—who helped two of the hijackers settle in San Diego—Goldhaber also notes:
None of this is to mention allegations of Saudi support for the lead hijacker pilots out of both Germany and, according to a still-secret investigation, Florida. The lion’s share of the complaint alleges, charity by charity, the pervasive sponsorship of al-Qaida’s global jihad by state-controlled charities with the regime’s knowledge.
Describing the 9/11 plaintiffs as being positioned on an “appellate treadmill” relating to the sovereign immunity battle, Goldhaber is nonetheless optimistic about the suit’s potential:
It’s hard to make the rebuilding at Ground Zero look efficient, but the U.S. legal system is doing its best. One World Trade Center eventually rose from the ashes, and the 9/11 plaintiffs will likely get their day in court. They may or may not get to tell the story of Omar Al Bayoumi and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. But the plaintiffs are already in discovery against 18 defendants who are not insignificant. Among them are the three charities alleged to lie at the center of the Saudi state system for underwriting global jihad: the International Islamic Relief Organization, the Al-Haraiman Islamic Foundation and the Muslim World League (affiliated with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth).
We’ve provided just a few brief excerpts; read Goldhaber’s excellent summary here before tackling the full complaint here.
28Pages.org 