Should the three Manhattan justices reject a Saudi appeal calling for the case to be dismissed on the basis of sovereign immunity and, citing the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, uphold a 2005 ruling, the case could finally come to court in the next year.<\/p>\n
The merits of the claims have not been adjudicated. But the direction of the second circuit court of appeals judges\u2019 questions, Strada said, had given the families hope.<\/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
The case centers on the role of Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi national who helped find and guarantee lodgings in San Diego for the hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar more than a year before attacks. Both died when they flew American Airlines flight 77 into the Pentagon. All 59 people onboard the flight were killed, and 125 people died on the ground.<\/p>\n
Neither of the two hijackers qualified as pilots, and, according to the 9\/11 Commission Report<\/a>, they \u201cwere ill-prepared for a mission in the United States \u2026 Neither had spent any substantial time in the west, and neither spoke much, if any, English.\u201d<\/p>\n But, it continued, it was plausible that the two men, or the 9\/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, would have tried to identify a friendly contact in the US, and it was unlikely they would have come \u201cwithout arranging to receive assistance from one or more individuals informed in advance of their arrival\u201d.<\/p>\n In 2012, an FBI report named Fahad al-Thumairy, a Saudi Islamic affairs official and imam of a Saudi-built King Fahd mosque in Culver City, California, as having worked with al-Bayoumi. The report named another Saudi embassy official, Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah, who allegedly had ordered al-Bayoumi and al-Thumairy to assist the hijackers, according to the report.<\/p>\n The report has long been criticized by the 9\/11 families. The commission did not have access to videos seized by UK police in the days after 9\/11 that showed al-Bayoumi in Washington DC in which he referenced a \u201cplan\u201d or a sketch of an airplane in blue ink and a mathematical equation for flight path descent rates or what lawyers for the 9\/11 families call a \u201cflight planning diagram\u201d.<\/p>\n The case, if it now comes to court, turns on whether the assistance the hijackers received from al-Bayoumi and others in California was part of the al-Qaida plot.<\/p>\n This is denied by all those accused. \u201cIt has never been the policy of Saudi Arabia<\/a> to attack its ally, the United States,\u201d said attorney Greg Rapawy, who is representing the Gulf state kingdom. He pointed out that there was \u201cno finding of direction and control\u201d and the attacks had been \u201ccompartmentalized even within al-Qaida\u201d.<\/p>\n He pointed to the commission\u2019s conclusion that it found \u201cno evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded\u201d al-Qaida. \u201cSaudi did not support violent jihad, condemned terror and opposed al-Qaida,\u201d Rapaway said in court.<\/p>\n Last month, in a break with 9\/11 commemoration tradition, Strada said successive US administrations had \u201cwithheld evidence \u2026 broke promises, both public and private. It\u2019s been one betrayal after another.\u201d She called on Donald Trump to confront the Saudis: \u201cTell them that if they want to be friends with the USA they cannot continue to deny all of this.\u201d<\/p>\n Over the same September weekend, a four-day conspiracist conference was being held uptown. Turning the Tide: 9\/11 25 Years Later set out to examine inconsistencies in official accounts of the attack and assert longstanding theories that the twin towers could not have collapsed merely from the impact of jetliners loaded with fuel.<\/p>\n
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