Federal Judge Sarah Netburn has given the Biden administration a Feb. 11 deadline by which it must decide whether it will back a lawsuit brought by family members of victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks demanding $7 billion in Afghan funds currently being held by the Federal Reserve. There is actually more than one case brought against the Taliban (and others) by 9/11 family members, but only one of them, known as the Havlish case, representing 150 family members of victims, actually won a judgment of $7 billion for damages a decade ago. Last September, Havlish lawyers convinced a judge to issue a writ of execution to be presented to the Federal Reserve’s legal department authorizing seizure of $7 billion of the Afghan funds. At that point, the Biden administration intervened, and has now centralized handling of the case in the Justice Department, to decide how to proceed.
This is not a straightforward matter. There are multiple plaintiffs, whose lawyers are squabbling with each other, and complicated issues of law and government policy involved. There is also the fact that the $9.4 billion in Afghan Central Bank reserves were illegally seized by the Federal Reserve, and do not belong to the United States. More and more voices are demanding that those funds be released to the Afghan government to address the dire economic and humanitarian crisis. A fresh airing of the real story of the Anglo-Saudi role in the 9/11 attacks —not Osama bin Laden sitting in an Afghan cave and not the Taliban—would be a good way to clear the air.
