Family members of victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks packed a federal appeals courtroom in New York City on Wednesday as three judges heard arguments over whether legal claims against Saudi Arabia can proceed.<\/p>\n
The judges revealed through their questions that there are still many legal issues to be decided in the lawsuit even though it has dragged on for almost a quarter-century.<\/p>\n
They didn’t say when they might rule on whether claims can proceed to trial alleging that Saudi Arabia provided aid to at least two of the 19 men who hijacked planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field that day.<\/p>\n
Still, Terry Strada, whose husband Tom Strada was killed in the attacks, said she was encouraged that more than 100 family members of 9\/11 victims turned out and by the judges’ questions.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt really was a good day for us,\u201d she said afterward. \u201cThe judges asked really meaningful questions and hammered the Saudi attorneys and didn\u2019t let up. They weren\u2019t buying what the Saudis were selling.\u201d<\/p>\n
In lawsuits, hundreds of victims\u2019 relatives and injured survivors, along with insurance companies and businesses, claim that employees of the Saudi government directly and knowingly assisted the hijackers and other plotters and fueled al-Qaida\u2019s development into a terrorist organization by funding charities that supported them.<\/p>\n
Some defendants, including Iran, the Taliban and al-Qaida, already have been found in default.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, lawyers from both sides were questioned repeatedly by the appeals judges who seemed unsure exactly how they would respond to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s claims that it should be dismissed as a defendant on sovereign immunity grounds.<\/p>\n
Lawyers for Saudi Arabia say the nation and the U.S. were partners in the 1990s against terrorism, al-Qaida and its founder, Osama bin Laden. <\/p>\n
Although 15 of the 19 attackers on 9\/11 were Saudis, the Saudi government has long denied any involvement in the attacks.<\/p>\n
Lawyers for victims’ relatives claim that a group of extremist religious leaders in Saudi Arabia aided the hijackers.<\/p>\n
The appeal by Saudi Arabia stemmed from an August 2025 ruling by U.S. District Judge George B. Daniels, who decided that the case could proceed in federal court, though he did not rule on the merits of the claims.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Family members of victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks packed a federal appeals courtroom in New York…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367552,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[5301,98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-367551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-9-11","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}