NEW YORK: A lawsuit against governments linked to the Sept. 11 attacks will flounder on a lack of evidence and hurt American interests by opening the door to copycat cases overseas, analysts told Arab News on Thursday.
On Wednesday, US District Judge George Daniels in Manhattan rejected Saudi Arabia’s bid to dismiss lawsuits claiming that it helped to plan the strikes on New York and Washington and should pay billions of dollars in damages to victims.
Sigurd Neubauer, a Washington-based analyst, said the ruling on the lawsuit, which was made under a federal law called the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), threatened US interests down the road.
“The problem with the JASTA law and this suit is that it is the thin end of the wedge. It sets a worrying precedent for prosecutions and lawsuits against foreign governments in the US that were previously immune to these actions,” Neubauer said.
“The US has long sought to protect its servicemen from being prosecuted overseas, whether by the International Criminal Court or another mechanism. This case erodes one of the safeguards against this from happening.”
The Saudi government has long denied involvement in the attacks in which airplanes hijacked by Al-Qaeda crashed into New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon outside Washington and a Pennsylvania field. Nearly 3,000 people died.
Ellen Wald, author of “Saudi, Inc: The Arabian Kingdom’s Pursuit of Profit and Power,” which will be published on April 3, said the case will likely flounder through a lack of evidence connecting Saudi officials with the attacks.
The 9/11 Commission, and the so-called “28 pages” of a report from the 2002 investigation released in 2016 after being classified for years, effectively cleared Saudi officials of any wrongdoing, Wald said.
“When the 28 pages were released, they didn’t show any evidence linking the Saudi state conclusively to those behind the 9/11 attacks and I think that the major issue going forward is that there doesn’t seem to be evidence to make the case.
District Judge Daniels’ decision covers claims by the families of those killed, about 25,000 people who suffered injuries, and many businesses and insurers, with claims amounting to billions of dollars.
The judge also dismissed claims that two Saudi banks, Al-Rajhi Bank and National Commercial Bank, and Saudi Binladin Group, a construction firm run by the bin Laden family, helped to finance the attacks, saying he lacked jurisdiction.
For a long time, Saudi Arabia had immunity from Sept. 11 lawsuits in the US. That changed in September 2016, when the US Congress overrode President Barack Obama’s veto of JASTA, allowing such cases to proceed.
Obama had warned that the law could expose US firms, troops and officials to lawsuits overseas.
“It was easy for Republicans and Democrats to pass this law at the end of Obama’s second term, but we’re in a very different context now in which Saudi Arabia could be surpassing even Israel as America’s most important ally in the Middle East,” Neubauer said.
Judge Daniels said the plaintiffs could try to prove that Riyadh was behind the alleged activities of Fahad Al-Thumairy, an imam at King Fahad Mosque in Culver City, California, and Omar Al-Bayoumi, said to be an intelligence agent.
They were accused of helping two hijackers acclimate themselves to the US and prepare for the attacks. Riyadh argues that the plaintiffs could not show that any Saudi official, staffer or agent planned or carried out the strikes.
Case against countries accused of links to Sept. 11 attacks ‘expected to fail due to lack of evidence’
Case against countries accused of links to Sept. 11 attacks ‘expected to fail due to lack of evidence’
Italian general challenges Meloni from the right
- A career soldier with experience in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, Vannacci shot to fame in 2023 with the publication of a controversial book, “The World Upside Down”
- Meloni’s party remains the most popular, polling at more than 29 percent support — more than it won in 2022 elections
ROME: A retired general who criticizes the EU, wants to send home illegal migrants and says Ukraine should accept a peace deal with Russia is challenging Italy’s hard-right government on its own turf.
Roberto Vannacci, 57, last month defected from the far-right League party, a partner in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s coalition government, and set up a new party he said is “proud of being right-wing.”
Opinion polls put the new “National Future” at around three percent support, most of it taken from the League, led by Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, but also Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy.
Meloni’s party remains the most popular, polling at more than 29 percent support — more than it won in 2022 elections.
But the general offers “the first movement emerging on the right that isn’t aligned with the three main parties,” Lorenzo Castellani, professor of politics at Rome’s Luiss University, said.
A career soldier with experience in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, Vannacci shot to fame in 2023 with the publication of a controversial book, “The World Upside Down.”
In it, he complained about a “dictatorship of minorities,” while saying Italian star volleyball player Paola Egonu, who is black, had features that “do not represent Italian-ness.”
He was suspended from his army job, with Defense Minister Guido Crosetto — a member of Meloni’s party — saying that his “personal ramblings ... discredit the army, the Defense Ministry and the constitution.”
But in the end, he was allowed to retire, and the controversy made him a celebrity on the far right.
Salvini, whose anti-immigration League has been losing ground to Meloni’s in recent years, invited him into his party and Vannacci was elected to the European Parliament in 2024.
But last month the ex-general struck out on his own, taking with him two League MPs and another who was independent but formerly in Meloni’s party.
He is targeting voters disenchanted with Salvini and also Meloni, who has radical far-right roots but in office has taken a more pragmatic approach.
National Future is “a party of the true right, pure, sincere, proud, unashamed of being right-wing,” and “not hesitant, not fearful,” Vannacci told the foreign press association Thursday.
Once a firebrand euroskeptic, Meloni has worked closely with the EU in office, while her flagship promise to cut illegal immigration has been tempered by a major boost in visas for legal migrants.
Vannacci has “a more extremist approach to issues like immigration, like security, where he explicitly talks about remigration,” Castellani said.
The ex-general highlights Italy’s Roman-Christian roots and has called for migrants to be returned to their countries of origin if they arrived illegally or committed a crime.
While Meloni has distanced herself from Italy’s Fascist past, Vannacci was accused of revisionism last year after a social media post defending the democratic credentials of dictator Benito Mussolini.
National sovereignty, meanwhile, is a priority, with Vannacci lambasting the EU as both overreaching member states’ rights and globally ineffective — not least in the current wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.
