An interesting footnote to 911 and the debate over the role of Saudis comes to us from the Crossroads Arabia blog:
WASHINGTON, 20 January 2005 — The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, three Saudi princes, several Saudi businessmen and Saudi financial institutions were dismissed as defendants on Tuesday in lawsuits accusing them of supporting Al-Qaeda before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Manhattan Federal Judge Richard Casey cited the report by the Sept. 11 Commission, which found no evidence that Saudi leaders provided support to the hijackers.
“The US State Department has not designated the Kingdom a state sponsor of terrorism,� said Judge Casey.
He specifically dismissed as defendants Prince Sultan, second deputy premier and minister of defense and aviation; Saudi Ambassador to Britain Prince Turki Al-Faisal; Prince Mohammed Al-Faisal, Sheikh Saleh Kamel and Dallah Al-Baraka, among others.
The 9/11 lawsuits allege more than 200 defendants provided material support to Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.
Prince Turki said he was happy that the court rejected all charges against him. “The charges were not true at all. I spent a long time after Osama Bin Laden to bring him to justice�. He said he considered Bin Laden an evil man who violated Islamic rules by killing innocent people.
Prince Turki thanked the American justice system that acquitted him of all charges.
“The court has reviewed the complaints in their entirety and finds no allegations from which it can infer that the princes knew the charities to which they donated were fronts for Al-Qaeda,� Casey said. “There are no such factual bases presented, there are only conclusions.�
Given the passions surrounding 911 and the enormity of the loss of life, the controveries are likely to go on.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.