Court Ruling Cuts off Saudi 9/11 Litigation

by IPT News  •  Jun 29, 2009 at 6:08 pm

http://www.investigativeproject.org/blog/2009/06/court-ruling-cuts-off-saudi-9-11-litigation

Saudi Arabia and four of its princes are immune from 9/11-related civil litigation after Monday's U.S. Supreme Court decision not to take up an appeal of a lower court decision that ruled against 9/11 families. The move keeps intact a ruling by New York's 2nd District Court of Appeals dismissing the lawsuits. In a statement, attorneys for the family of the FBI's former New York Executive Agent in Charge John O'Neill, who died at the World Trade Center, expressed disappointment at the ruling:

"We note, however, that there are still cases pending in the lower courts against other sovereign nations unaffected by the Supreme Court's ruling.

We note, too, that there are still cases pending against other defendants seeking to hold them accountable for their actions in assisting Al Qaeda."

Earlier Monday, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported on a government report which found a Saudi-financed charity, the Saudi High Commission, helped supply weapons to the Somali warlord responsible for killing 18 U.S. soldiers in the 1993 Black Hawk Down battle. According to the Inquirer:

"The Saudi Arabian High Commission has received humanitarian supplies from Sudan and Iraq; however the crates from the Sudan and Iraq have also contained military weapons, ammunition and supplies, usually hidden in false bottom containers," the intelligence report said.

The intelligence document does not make clear when the arms shipments took place or whether the weapons were employed in the Mogadishu battle. It also warned that its findings were raw, 'not finally evaluated intelligence.'"

The Defense Intelligence Agency report has been in the public domain since 1997, the Federation of American Scientists obtained it through a Freedom of Information Act Request. Read the memo here.

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