A navy widow Stephanie Ross DeSimone who was pregnant with her husband’s –Navy Commander Patrick Dunn– daughter when he died during 9/11 has sued Saudi Arabia for the wrongful death of her husband.
This has been made possible by the passing of a bill which enables private citizens to sue terror-supporting states into law.
The basis for DeSimone’s lawsuit is that the hijackers at the wheel of American Airlines Flight 77, which killed her husband, were Saudi nationals, as were 15 of the 19 who took control of the four planes.
DeSimone is technically the first to sue under the new law, but she is sure to be joined by hundreds more after James Kreindler, a New York attorney stated that his firm which represents a lot of clients who have been looking for a way to gain compensation from the Saudi Arabian government would be filing court documents to a New York-based federal court by Monday at the latest which will set the ball rolling on several lawsuits against Saudi Arabia.
The Bill that brought this to life was proposed in 2009 but was only re-introduced last year. The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) as it is called, allows US citizens to sue not only states that are officially considered by the State Department to be State Sponsors of Terrorism but also those who may have assisted an attack be they US ally or not.
President Obama was strongly opposed to this bill even using his veto power to try and kill it, but his veto was overruled by congress who made sure the bill was pushed through.
Obama’s fear was simply the reverse repercussions of the act as it made it possible not only for US citizens to sue other states but for citizens of other states to also sue the US.
This means any number of questionable activities the US might be undertaking in other nations could leave them open to be hit with lawsuits from nationals that feel wronged.
Saudi Arabia has already responded stating that the bill could bring about “serious unintended consequences.” Also Senate leader majority leader Mitch McConnell admitted on Thursday that “nobody had really focused on the potential downside in terms of our international relationships, and I think it was just a ball dropped,” with Congress scrambling to try and mitigate the damage by saying they will dilute the contents of the bill, or restrict its scope.
As for the suit itself, the success of it is not guaranteed as a 2004 US report on the attacks “found no evidence that the Saudi government, as an institution, or senior officials within the Saudi government funded Al-Qaeda.”
There’s also the problem of implementation as even if Saudi Arabian officials are implicated and so on, there’s no sure-fire way to compel Riyadh to pay the damages.