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Trillion Dollar
Lawsuit Linking Saudis to Al Qaeda and 9/11- We reported this months before it
made the Main Stream
The Bush administration is closely monitoring a private lawsuit accusing members of the
Saudi royal family of ties to Al Qaeda, and may move in a federal court here to dismiss or
delay the suit, which was brought by relatives of Sept. 11 victims, according to
administration officials.
Government laywers, the officials said, are trying to determine whether the case threatens
to damage Saudi-American relations, which would give them reason to block the suit. The
suit seeks $1 trillion in damages and is being pursued here by nearly 3,000 of the
relatives.
A State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he knew of no plans
by the United States to take action in court, but he said the issue of the lawsuit had
been raised in recent meetings of top American and Saudi officials.
"The Saudis have made their concerns known at a senior level," he said.
The legal team representing the families is led by one of the nation's leading plaintiff's
lawyers, Ron Motley, of Charleston, S.C., who is best known for obtaining a landmark $350
billion settlement from the tobacco industry in the late 1990's.
"This has become a true mission for me," said Mr. Motley, whose folksy,
country-lawyer style masks what adversaries have described as his ferociousness in
pretrial maneuvering. "The individuals that we've sued faciliated the events
of Sept. 11."
Bush administration officials say senior Saudi officials have complained to their American
counterparts that the suit could damage the already strained relationship between the two
countries.
The Saudis have been especially alarmed, the Americans say, because the list of defendants
includes two of the most prominent members of the Saudi royal family: Prince Sultan bin
Abdelaziz al-Saud, the defense minister, and Prince Turki bin Faisal, the former spy chief
and the new Saudi ambassador to Britain.
The Saudi Embassy in Washington said it had no comment on the lawsuit, and did not respond
to requests for comment from Prince Sultan or Prince Turki.
But Americans close to the royal family say the suit has so alarmed Prince Turki's lawyers
that he has been advised to avoid all travel to the United States, and that other wealthy
Saudis defendants are threatening to move billions of dollars out of the United States for
fear that their assets here could be seized.
Mr. Motley's legal team includes many of the other lawyers involved in the huge tobacco
settlement, as well as Allan Gerson, a Washington lawyer who brought suit against Libya on
behalf of families of victims of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie,
Scotland, in 1988.
Mr. Gerson, an international law specialist, said he was not surprised that the government
would consider intervening to derail the lawsuit. "There will probably be an effort
by the government to seek dismissal or deferral of the case on the grounds that at this
particularly sensitive juncture in U.S.-Saudi relations, a suit like this would put the
interests of private claimaints ahead of the interests of state," he said. He is
optimistic that the courts would reject such a move.
The lawsuit repeats accusations that have been widely circulated since Sept. 11 about
Saudi financial support for Al Qaeda, mostly through Islamic charity groups and Saudi
banks.
Liz Alderman, of Armonk, N.Y., whose son Peter died in the World Trade Center, said she
had joined in the suit becuase "there is no other way for the truth to come
out." "I've learned and I believe that an awful lot of the funding that
enabled the terrorists to attack America was provided by Saudi Arabia," she
said.
American officials insist they know of no evidence to support the suit's principle
accusations, including its charge that Prince Sultan "publicly supported and funded
several Islamic charities that were sponsoring Osama bin Laden."
Nor, the Americans say, do they know of any support for the suit's charge that Prince
Turki negotiated a deal with Al Qaeda in 1998 in which the terror network agreed to end
its efforts to subvert the Saudi monarchy in exchange for a Saudi promise not to demand
the extradition of Qaeda leaders.
Wyche Fowler, American ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1996 until last year, said that in
his years in the embassy, he had never seen any evidence to suggest that members of the
royal family had given money to Islamic charities with the intent of aiding Al Qaeda.
"Saudis are not in the business of funding terrorists against their friend, the
United States," he said, adding that he had been impressed by the Saudi government's
recent commitment to tighten scrutiny on charities.
Mr. Motley has vowed to pursue members of the Saudi royal family and other prominent
Saudis even more aggressively than he pursued tobacco executives a decade ago. He said he
is eager to seize Saudi assets in the United States if the defendants refuse to submit to
court orders for depositions and the presentation of written evidence.
"The tobacco people were bad guys in that they had knowledge about the dangers of
cigarettes," Mr. Motley said. "But they never intentionally launched an attack
against the United States." Article by Philip Shenon
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