9/11-suit bill passes, heads for veto

Victims could sue Saudi Arabia; White House sees backfire

House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California lead House members down the steps of the Capitol in Washington on Friday for a ceremony marking the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California lead House members down the steps of the Capitol in Washington on Friday for a ceremony marking the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

WASHINGTON -- Congress sent President Barack Obama a bipartisan bill that would allow families of Sept. 11, 2001, victims to sue the government of Saudi Arabia, putting lawmakers on a collision course with the White House on the eve of the 15th anniversary of the attacks.

The House passed the legislation Friday by voice vote, about four months after the measure cleared the Senate despite vehement objections from Saudi Arabia. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals.

The legislation gives victims' families the right to sue in U.S. court for any role that elements of the Saudi government may have played in the 2001 attacks that killed thousands in New York, the Washington, D.C., area and Pennsylvania. The measure was never debated on the House or Senate floors.

The White House has signaled that Obama would veto the legislation over the potential for it to backfire and apprehension about undermining a long-standing yet strained relationship with a critical U.S. ally in the Middle East. The Obama administration has warned that if U.S. citizens can take the Saudis to court, then a foreign country could in turn sue the United States.

Votes from two-thirds of the members in the House and Senate would be needed to override a veto.

Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, said the U.S. government should be more concerned about the families of the victims than "diplomatic niceties." Poe said he doesn't know whether the Saudi government had a role in the 9/11 attacks.

"That's for a jury of Americans to decide," Poe said.

There was no immediate comment from Saudi Arabia. The timing of the vote could be seen as an additional slap at the kingdom, which was preparing for the annual hajj pilgrimage beginning today. But a sponsor of the bill, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said lawmakers were focused only on the symbolism of bringing the bill to the floor as close to the 15th anniversary as possible.

"The families have been asking for this for over a decade," said Terry Strada, whose husband, Thomas Strada, was killed in the attack on the World Trade Center towers, and has long lobbied Congress on the issue. "We don't feel this is fast-track in any way, shape or form."

Sens. Charles Schumer of New York and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, both Democrats, called on Obama to sign the bill.

"If Saudi Arabia had no involvement with the attacks, it has nothing to fear from litigation," they wrote in a letter Friday.

The bill's proponents disputed the argument that there will be a boomerang effect if the measure is signed into law. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., another sponsor, said foreign governments cannot look the other way if terrorist activities are being plotted or launched from their countries.

Terry Strada, national head of 9/11 Families United For Justice Against Terrorism, dismissed fears that the U.S. could be the target of lawsuits.

"If we're not funding terrorist organizations and killing people, then we don't have anything to worry about," she said.

But French Parliament member Pierre Lellouche, who serves as chairman of France's equivalent of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he would pursue legislation that would permit French citizens to sue the United States with cause.

"I have sympathy with the notion of hitting those countries which actively support terrorism," Lellouche said Friday. But the U.S. bill "will cause a legal revolution in international law with major political consequences."

The vote came after House members from both parties briefly adjourned to commemorate the anniversary of the attacks. House Speaker Paul Ryan led a moment of silence on the Capitol steps, and lawmakers sang "God Bless America" in remembrance of 9/11, when lawmakers gathered in the same location to sing the song immediately after the attacks on New York and Washington.

The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act had triggered a threat from Riyadh to pull billions of dollars from the U.S. economy if the legislation is enacted. But Saudi Foreign Minister Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir denied in May that the kingdom made any threats over the bill. He said Riyadh had warned that investor confidence in the U.S. would shrink if the bill became law.

"In fact what they [Congress] are doing is stripping the principle of sovereign immunities, which would turn the world for international law into the law of the jungle," Al-Jubeir said.

Information for this article was contributed by Richard Lardner, Jon Gambrell and Matthew Lee of The Associated Press; and by Jennifer Steinhauer of The New York Times.

A Section on 09/10/2016

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