A U.S. judge decided against allowing the 9/11 victims to confiscate billions of dollars worth of property pertaining to Afghanistan’s central bank in order to pay for court judgments they won against the Taliban, Reuters reports.
By approving the seizures, U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn in Manhattan declared that Da Afghanistan Bank was beyond her purview and that only the U.S. president is authorized to recognize the Islamist terrorist organization as the Afghan government.
The Manhattan-based U.S. District Judge George Daniels, who also presides over the legal proceedings, would consider Netburn’s advice before deciding whether to accept it.
The verdict represents a setback for four groups of creditors who filed lawsuits against several defendants, including al-Qaeda, who they believed to be responsible for the 9/11 attacks. After the defendants failed to appear in court, the creditors were able to win default judgments.
The Taliban government, which was in power at the time of the assaults, let al-Qaeda operate there.
Al-Qaeda and the Taliban were overthrown by the United States in late 2001, but after the withdrawal of American and other Western forces from Afghanistan, the Taliban took back control.
When contacted for comment, attorneys for the creditor organizations did not do so right away.
The $7 billion in money blocked at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York by the Afghan central bank have been the target of attempts by the organizations to access them.
U.S. President Joe Biden directed that $3.5 billion of that amount be set aside “for the benefit of the Afghan people” in an executive order issued in February, leaving the remaining funds for victims to sue in civil court.
Regarding whether the creditor organizations had a right to money under the Terrorist Risk Insurance Act of 2002, the U.S. government remained neutral at the time.
It asked Netburn and Daniels to have a limited perspective on exceptions to sovereign immunity, pointing out the dangers of interfering with the president’s ability to manage international relations and potential problems for American property overseas.
Afghan deposits total roughly $2 billion in other nations.
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