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Date Posted: 14:11:32 08/16/02 Fri
Author: Weird_Enigma
Author Host/IP: 209.252.119.11
Subject: Sept. 11 families sue for $1 trillion

Posted on Fri, Aug. 16, 2002

Sept. 11 families sue for $1 trillion
Lawsuit seeks to punish suspected financial backers of terrorists
CASSIO FURTADO
Observer Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - More than 600 families who lost loved ones in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks filed a lawsuit Thursday against three Saudi princes, seven international banks, the government of Sudan and eight Islamic charities, accusing them of financing Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terrorist network.

The suit, which seeks more than $1 trillion, claims: "These entities, cloaked in a thin veil of legitimacy, were and are the true enablers of terrorism."

It was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington. To date, the record for damages is the settlement agreed to by tobacco companies in 1998, worth $206 billion in the first 25 years.

Thursday's 259-page legal action, loosely modeled after a suit against Libyan government agencies for their alleged role in the 1988 Pan Am 103 disaster, is intended to punish the Sept. 11 attacks' backers, the plaintiffs said.

"We will move terrorist financing schemes out of the shadows and into the light of the day," said lead plaintiff Thomas Burnett of Bloomington, Minn., whose son, Thomas Burnett Jr., died when United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in rural Pennsylvania on Sept. 11.

The plaintiffs acknowledge they face long odds of collecting anything.

"As my son, Tom, told his wife, Deena, from the cabin of Flight 93, `We're going to do something,' " Burnett said.

The complaint, based on information from an investigative team paid for by the plaintiffs, names three prominent members of the Saudi royal family: Princes Turki al-Faisal al Saud, Sultan bin Abdul Aziz al Saud and Mohammed al-Faisal al Saud. It alleges Prince Sultan, the Saudi minister of defense and aviation, has donated at least $6 million since 1994 to four Islamic charities that allegedly supported al-Qaida.

Ronald Motley of Mount Pleasant, S.C., lead attorney in the case, said he had "every reason to believe that the defendants in this action are still funneling, laundering and sending money to al-Qaida." Motley was a lead attorney in the 1998 tobacco case.

A spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington, Tariq Allagany, said the kingdom's lawyers would have no immediate comment on the suit.

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11 were Saudi nationals. Bush administration officials, however, have insisted the Persian Gulf kingdom remains a stout U.S. ally against terrorism, and State Department spokesman Philip Reeker reiterated that view when asked about the suit.

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