Law Review: Critical juncture for 9/11 lawsuit against Saudis

[Nostalgia]

At the moment the north tower of the World Trade Center collapsed at 10:28 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, Sharon Premoli was scrambling up an escalator from the below-ground concourse toward the street with dozens of other office workers in a desperate bid to escape.

She looked behind her and saw two things that are burned forever in her memory: A human chain of evacuees riding the escalator and a boiling cloud of dust and debris racing toward them.

The force of that swirling storm picked her up and threw her into nearby storefront. After she awoke, she said, she soon realized she was lying on the lifeless body of a man and that she was covered with his blood.

"I remember taking my nails and scraping my tongue to remove the debris from my mouth," said Premoli, at the time a vice president for development with a financial services software company based in the North Tower. "I tried to get up and I realized I was lying on the body, and I am profoundly haunted by that."

Strip away all the arcana and legal angels dancing on heads of pins, and Premoli is the human face of litigation alleging Saudi Arabia financed the 9/11 hijackers.

She is one of 6,000 World Trade Center victims and their families who have charged in lawsuits that the government of Saudi Arabia or its officials funded Islamic charities that in turn helped finance the 9/11 attacks. The Saudis did so even as U.S. government officials warned that their money was ending up in the wrong hands, the lawsuit charges.

The case is likely to reach a critical juncture this month when the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide whether to hear arguments on Saudi Arabia's legal exposure.

The firm leading the appeal of lower court rulings dismissing Saudi Arabia as a defendant is Cozen O'Connor of Center City. It is representing insurers that suffered damages at ground zero along with appellate lawyers from the Washington office of Sidley Austin. Premoli's firm is Motley Rice, a leading plaintiffs' firm based in South Carolina that came to prominence, and significant wealth, in the tobacco litigation of the 1990s.

"All we are asking for is our day in court," said Premoli, who has moved to Vermont and now works as a consultant.

It seems like a simple premise, in fact the very pillar of the American civil justice system.

Yet by law and tradition, the United States government has long made such lawsuits against foreign governments excruciatingly difficult.

The hurdle for the plaintiffs, both insurers and individual victims, isn't simply facts and law, but also the political dimensions.

Saudi Arabia is one of the United States' most important allies in the Middle East. It has been a forward staging area for the U.S. military, deemed an important counterweight to Iran's regional ambitions, seen as a huge source of energy, and a very big purchaser of American goods and services.

U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan, in a friend-of-the-court brief filed May 29, said political questions lie at the heart of laws governing lawsuits against foreign governments.

And she emphatically urged the Supreme Court not to hear the case. Kagan asserted that there were no significant unresolved issues of law, the baseline standard for Supreme Court review, that would compel the high court to take the case.

Yet, if the defendants in this case were U.S. citizens, it is possible that the litigation would have been settled long ago.

The case includes uncontroverted information that Saudi government supported charities suspected by U.S. intelligence agencies of funneling funds to al-Qaeda as it grew from a regional threat to a pivotal player in the Balkans conflicts in recent years and a huge source of international terrorism.

Two delegations of U.S. officials traveled to Riyadh, one in 1999 and the other a year later, giving the Saudis a list of suspect charities, banks, money exchanges and terrorism financiers. According to senior American government officials, the Saudis did nothing.

Kagan's May 29 brief, representing the opinion of the Obama administration, was significant because the Supreme Court in most cases follows the solicitor general's lead.

But not always.

One threshold requirement for Supreme Court review is whether the law on a given subject is unsettled, and it is conceivable that the court may make that call in this case. That is because two separate appellate rulings holding foreign governments responsible for killings in the United States seem to conflict with another appellate court ruling last year throwing out the lawsuit against Saudi Arabia.

The plaintiffs say those decisions make clear that foreign governments, even strong allies of the U.S., can be sued. And, they maintain, that is the only way 9/11 victims will achieve justice.

"Why would the Obama administration give less weight to the principles of justice, transparency, and security and more to the pleadings of a foreign government?" asked Tom Burnett Sr., whose son, Tom Jr., died when United Flight 93 crashed near Shanksville, Pa., on Sept. 11, 2001.

He added of Kagan's brief in the case, "It strikes a blow against the public's right to know who financed and supported" the 9/11 attacks.

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/busin...st_Saudis.html

[Victor]

Muslim Terrorists brought down the WTC buildings by flying jumbo jets into them and setting them on fire for 1 hour?

Are you sure its wasn't Noddy & Bigears what done it?


Are you sure it was Muslim Terrorists who did it on 911, and if so, how did they get the demolition explosives set? Were is one shred of conclusive EVIDENCE there were any Muslim Terrorists involved?


On the other hand these Qualified people claim 911 was a controlled demolition which collapsed the 3 high-rise buildings on 911:-


http://www.ae911truth.org/


Are we seriously expected to believe that 3 high-rise buildings were collapsed symmetrically by crashing only 2 planes Asymmetrically?

This was added quite recently:-
Context of '(Summer 2003): 9/11 Commissioner Tells White House of Saudi Links to 9/11 Plotters, White House Uninterested' -
http://www.historycommons.org/contex...audiWhiteHouse

9/11 Commissioner John Lehman repeatedly meets with Bush administration officials and discusses links between the 9/11 hijackers and Saudi government officials.
Lehman Interested in Saudi Money - Lehman is aware that the Commission’s investigators are working the topic and is interested to see what they will find. According to author Philip Shenon, “He thought it was clear early on that there was some sort of Saudi support network in San Diego that had made it possible for the hijackers to hide in plain sight in Southern California.” He is especially intrigued by money possibly passed from Princess Haifa, wife of the Saudi ambassador to the US, to associates of the hijackers (see December 4, 1999), although Lehman thinks she would not have known the money’s real destination and had simply signed checks given her by radicals at the Saudi embassy in Washington. Lehman also doubts that the Saudi officials knew the details of the 9/11 plot, but thinks they knew the hijackers were “bad guys,” and “The bad guys knew who to go to to get help.”
Critical of 'Stonewalling' - Lehman is also interested in possible links between Iraq and al-Qaeda and goes to the White House to discuss these with administration officials. However, at the meetings he brings up the Saudi connection. There are several meetings, but the administration is not at all interested in the Saudi angle. Lehman will say: “I used to go over to see [White House chief of staff] Andy [Card], and I met with [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld three or four times, mainly to say, ‘What are you guys doing? This stonewalling is so counterproductive.’”
No Interest in Saudi Connection - However, there is an absolute lack of interest on the administration’s part about the Saudi information. According to Shenon, “Lehman was struck by the determination of the Bush White House to try to hide any evidence of the relationship between the Saudis and al-Qaeda.” Lehman will say: “They were refusing to declassify anything having to do with Saudi Arabia. Anything having to do with the Saudis, for some reason, it had this very special sensitivity.”

There's a sense of 'increasing leakage/exposure' vs 'increasing repression' right now. Even Brzezinski is sounding twitchy. 4th Reich, here we come?

911 was an inside/outside/backside/upside job involving multiple warring groups. On the extreme right we have the Bush-Scherff/Saudi/ONI faction; in the middle Cheney/wannabe BigOil/Big Money/Mafia/Challabi-types; on the left a confused mishmash of Islamic Fundies/dissafected Military/CIA/FBI/NSA/XYZ and right above, pulling all the strings, that nebulous political, soulless entity, Zionilluminatwhatever.

Mix all to grey and it's easy to see the reason it has all taken so long to fall apart.