Justice Against Sponsor of Terrorism Act

The Justice Against Sponsor of Terrorism Act (JASTA) is a bill that allows families of 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia for sponsoring an act of terrorism on US soil. Both the Senate and the House overwhelmingly voted in favour of the bill. President Barak Obama, however, vetoed the bill citing that it would set a dangerous precedent. For the first time ever, the US Congress overturned Obama’s veto which the White House spokesman, Josh Earnest, termed the “single most embarrassing thing the US Senate has done since 1983”.

Obama brushed aside the vast support for the bill claiming that politicians didn’t want to go against the wishes of 9/11 victims before the upcoming elections in November this year. However, there is much more to that than meets the eye. According to the 9/11 commission report, a commission set up in November 2002 to investigate the circumstances of the 9/11 attacks, Saudi Arabia is a primary source of al Qaeda funding. The report links Saudi government officials to supporting hijackers in San Diego, while also backing radical mosques in the US. Out of the 19 al Qaeda hijackers that carried out the attacks on 9/11, 15 were Saudi nationals. It will be astonishing if the Kindgom is held accountable in court for the terrorist act that led to more than a decade of wars in Afghanistan and the entire destabilisation of Iraq.



Saudi Arabia doesn’t seem particularly excited about new revelations and threatened to sell off $750 billion in US assets, convince allies in the Gulf Cooperation Council to scale back counter-terrorism cooperation, and limit US access to regional military bases. These threats smack of desperation and are unlikely to see any follow through since the Saudi Riyal is pegged to the US dollar. Are they willing to scuttle their own economy?

More than anything else, it appears that the American public is unwilling to overlook the ‘no questions asked’ US-Saudi alliance. The relationship has come under strain following the US nuclear deal with Iran. The Kingdom’s war in Yemen has also come under scrutiny since the Saudi military is flying jets and dropping bombs following a multi-billion dollar arms deal with the US. The war has devastated Yemen, caused a humanitarian crisis and, even rebirthed al Qaeda in the war-torn country.

Another route that Saudi Arabia plotted to kill JASTA bill was by pressuring US corporate giants General Electric, Dow Chemical, Boeing and Chevron to lobby Congress on their behalf. Failure on the Kingdom’s part to stop the bill with such powerful backing reflects how strong the public support for JASTA must be in an election year.

Conflict has engulfed much of the Middle East following the September 11 attacks of 2001 and hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost as a result. Can guilt for these atrocities be proven? What will the actual repercussions of American families suing Saudi Arabia be? Will the US suffer from the loss of sovereign immunity, as Obama fears, and be held accountable for wrongful deaths from drone strikes and other abuses by their troops stationed throughout the globe? That is definitely a risk, but a certain level of responsibility comes with the assumed role of world police. One thing is for certain, the CIA will now need to think twice the next time they sponsor a coup.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 4^th, 2016.

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