Obstacles loom for 9/11 suits against Saudi Arabia
Despite a new law clearing the way for victims’ families to sue, political and legal challenges remain in their quest for reparations
Last month Congress cleared the way for the families of people killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to sue the Saudi Arabian government for any role it may have played.
Congress enacted a law allowing Americans to pursue litigation over losses resulting from acts of terrorism carried out on U.S. soil, starting with the 2001 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. Claims against Saudi Arabia had been stalled in appellate court by a 1976 law granting foreign governments “sovereign immunity” from U.S. legal action.
Plaintiffs lauded passage of the bill — and Congress’ decision to override President Obama’s veto of it — as a landmark victory.
“I’m looking for truth, accountability and justice for the brutal murder of my husband and nearly 3,000 other innocent men, women and children,” said Terry Strada, a mother of three whose husband, Tom, died in the north tower of the World Trade Center, where he worked at Cantor Fitzgerald on the 104th floor.
“That’s what seems to be getting lost here,” she said. “That brutal murder took place.”
Despite the more favorable legal landscape, the 9/11 plaintiffs — about 9,000 of them — still face formidable obstacles in their fight to win reparations from the conservative desert kingdom, the homeland of 15 of the 19 hijackers. And even their lawyers acknowledge that families will probably never get what many say they want most: a formal Saudi admission of complicity.
The first obstacle is that there are likely to be continued political battles over the law. Some lawmakers are already looking for ways to soften it.
Obama opposed the bill because it could open up U.S. companies and individual U.S. officials to legal action in foreign courts over conducting private or government business.
In much of the Arab world, the new law was greeted with scorn, as Arabic-language online commentary questioned why the United States had not been held accountable for death and destruction resulting from its military actions in the region.
The Saudi government has hinted that it might divest itself of billions of dollars in U.S. assets to prevent them from being seized. Other possible retaliation could include scaling back cooperation in counter-terrorism efforts and access to crucial air bases.
“Weakening … sovereign immunity will affect all countries, including the United States,” the kingdom’s information minister, Adel al Toraifi, said in a statement carried this month by the Saudi state news agency.
A bigger difficulty for the 9/11 survivors will be prevailing in court.
In order to win a judgment, the families and their lawyers would have to make the case that the Saudi government played a direct role in the attacks — something the kingdom has always vehemently denied.
There has been no finding by the 9/11 commission, the FBI or any other official investigating body that senior Saudi officials played a part in the plot.
The closest any of them comes is ambiguous language by the commission that was widely interpreted as leaving open the possibility of lower-ranking Saudi officials’ involvement.
Families were heartened earlier this year when Congress released 28 formerly classified pages from one of its investigations, which found evidence that some of the hijackers “were in contact with, and received support or assistance from, individuals who may be connected to the Saudi government.”
As attorneys embark on discovery proceedings, the roles of some individuals — as well as the kingdom’s indirect support for Al Qaeda — will come under renewed scrutiny, lawyers say.
“We’ll be deposing people all around the world,” said James Kreindler, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. “It’s a major undertaking.”
One figure of particular interest is Fahad al Thumairy, a former consular official in Los Angeles and a onetime imam of the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City, who U.S. investigators believe had contact with two of the hijackers. Another is Omar al Bayoumi, also a Saudi government employee at the time, who helped those same two hijackers settle in Southern California. Both strongly denied to investigators any knowledge of the terrorist plot.
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, cases were filed in several venues across the country. Those were consolidated several years ago into a single suit in the Southern District of New York.
But new claims began surfacing almost immediately after the law’s enactment on Sept. 28, including one filed last month in district court in Washington by Stephanie Ross DeSimone, whose husband was killed when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon.
The quest for justice could drag on for years.
As an initial step, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, where the lawsuits have been stalled, will be asked to return the case to the Southern District. Then the discovery process can be relaunched, probably involving new depositions and testimony, plus thousands of pages of documentation.
Under the law, the U.S. attorney general could intervene in the court cases and seek a stay to stall the case. But it would have to convince the judge that the sitting U.S. administration was negotiating with the Saudi government about monetary reparations.
In the event of a settlement — even under very generous financial terms — the families could be left without the sense of closure many are seeking, because the terms of a settlement almost certainly would not include any acknowledgment of culpability, lawyers said.
“In settlements, there typically is not such an admission,” said attorney Kreindler.
Terry Strada said that what the families wanted most was a full examination of the facts — including those not known when the legal action began, only months after the attacks. Strada, whose husband’s body was never recovered, strongly believes that Saudi Arabia bears responsibility for 9/11.
“All we want is our day in court,” she said.
laura.king@latimes.com