The US Senate passed a bill on Tuesday that would allow survivors and relatives of those killed in the 9/11 attacks to seek legal damages against the government of Saudi Arabia for its alleged complicity in the terror plot.
The legislation — the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) — passed the Senate unanimously, despite a veto threat from President Barack Obama and warnings from Saudi officials about possible repercussions.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, a co-sponsor of the legislation, said the bill is overdue.
“Today the Senate has spoken loudly and unanimously that the families of victims of terrorist attacks should be able to hold the perpetrators, even if it’s a country, a nation, accountable,” Schumer said, adding that the legislation does not put the US at risk of foreign lawsuits because the measure only applies to attacks on US soil.
Related: CIA Report Says No Evidence Saudi Arabia ‘Willingly Supported’ al Qaeda Leading up to 9/11
Under current law, foreign governments are often considered immune from lawsuits filed in US courts, largely a result of the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act. JASTA would create exemptions in the immunity provisions for terrorism or other acts that cause “physical injury to person or property or death” in the US, the most obvious case being the 9/11 attacks.
The vote comes just one day after the US Treasury Department revealed, for the first time, that Saudi Arabia holds $116.8 billion in US government debt, as of March 2016.
Earlier this year, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir warned US lawmakers that his country might begin selling off $750 billion worth of treasury securities and other US assets if the 9/11 legislation were to pass.
The White House said on Tuesday that it has “serious concerns” about the bill, which still needs to pass the House before it hits the president’s desk.
“It’s difficult to imagine the president signing this legislation,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters.
‘It’s difficult to imagine the president signing this legislation.’
Intelligence officials are currently reviewing 28 classified pages of a 2002 congressional inquiry into 9/11 to determine whether some or any of their contents can be made public. Some believe the pages, which were classified by President George W. Bush’s administration for national security reasons, implicate Saudi officials and civilians in the attacks, which killed 2,996 people and injured more than 6,000 others. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi citizens.
Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas, who also sponsored the bill, said at a press conference on Tuesday that JATSA does not directly target the Saudis, but he also alluded to the still-classified pages. “We have yet to see the 28 pages that have not been yet released about the 9/11 report, and that may well be instructive,” he said.
Last week, the White House said that the review process for declassification is underway, and that it would hopefully conclude by the end of Obama’s term in office.
Related: 9/11 Families Suing Saudi Arabia Suffer Setback — But There’s Hope in Congress
Retired Senator Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat who co-chaired the 2002 congressional inquiry into 9/11, has been a particularly vocal proponent for releasing the 28 pages.
“What I can say is that it’s primarily the topic of who financed 9/11, that it points a strong figure at Saudi Arabia,” Graham told VICE News in September.
Like Graham, the families looking to sue Saudi Arabia also allege that charities with links to the Saudi government played a significant role in financing al-Qaeda in the years leading up to 9/11.
“The central thesis is that certain elements of the Ministry of Islamic Affairs used the government platforms available to them to channel resources to al-Qaeda,” Sean Carter, one of the lawyers representing plaintiffs, previously told VICE News.
Carter said that Saudi immunity has no merit, and that the lawsuit should be able to proceed based on existing laws.
“JASTA would make that absolutely clear, by plainly and explicitly foreclosing the tenuous immunity arguments that the kingdom is clinging to at this point in a desperate effort to avoid having to confront the compelling body of evidence the 9/11 families have presented,” he said.
JASTA was the result of a bipartisan effort by 16 senators to curb countries’ ability to invoke sovereign immunity in lawsuits when they are accused of supporting terrorism.
Schumer and Cornyn reintroduced JASTA last September — the third time that the bill had been submitted since 2011. The Senate passed it in December 2014, but it stalled in the House. Cornyn told Bloomberg on Tuesday that the bill was “tweaked” to address concerns by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who was worried that the original version was “overly broad” and could “end up with blowback against the US.”
Related: ‘Blind Spots and Inefficiencies’: The CIA Before and After 9/11
Schumer’s office provided VICE News with a summary of what was amended prior to Tuesday’s vote. Among the changes, the revised bill now includes a section allowing the US Attorney General “to intervene in one of these cases to seek a stay if the Secretary of State certifies that the US is working in good faith with the defendant country to resolve claims.”
Beyond addressing questions of sovereign immunity, the new Senate bill would amend the 1990 Anti-Terrorism Act “so that civil suits against foreign sponsors of terrorism can be held accountable in US courts where their conducts contribute to an attack that kills an American.”
Survivors and victims’ families filed several lawsuits against the Saudi government and entities within the kingdom in the years following 9/11. Those lawsuits were consolidated in New York federal court in early 2004, with the plaintiffs identified as a group called 9/11 Families and Survivors United for Justice Against Terrorism. In the decade since then, Saudi Arabia’s lawyers have been able to drag out the case by claiming sovereign immunity.
Saudi Arabia, a stalwart US ally in the Middle East, has consistently denied involvement in the al-Qaeda plot to attack the World Trade Center in New York.
“The idea that the Saudi government funded, organized, or even knew about September 11 is malicious and blatantly false,” Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a member of the royal family and an ambassador to the US from 1983 to 2005, said in 2003. “There is something wrong with the basic logic of those who spread these spurious charges. Al-Qaeda is a cult that is seeking to destroy Saudi Arabia as well as the United States. By what logic would we support a cult that is trying to kill us?”
The US Senate’s Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA)
Top photo via Wikimedia Commons
