President Barack Obama will veto the 9/11 bill allowing victims’ families to sue Saudi Arabia for the terror attacks in New York, Washington, D.C. area and Pennsylvania. e GOP-controlled House of Representatives passed Senate bill 2040 (S.2040), known as the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, ignoring veto threats from the president and Riyadh vowing to pull billions of dollars from the USA economy.
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United States passes a law allowing families of 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia.
The bill’s authors have said that they have the two-thirds vote needed in both chambers to override the President’s veto – it would mark the first in Obama’s presidency.
It would not increase the liability of the United States.
Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn of Texas said Obama should quickly veto the bill, if that’s his plan, so Congress will have time to override.
The White House has been adamant in its opposition to the bill, which would nullify the longstanding American policy of granting sovereign immunity to foreign government officials in cases where those governments are found to be involved in terrorist attacks.
Lawmakers in the US House of Representatives introduced the bill on Friday. The Senate version boasts 24 co-sponsors, including such unlikely allies as Sen. The Senate sent the bill to Obama on Monday night, giving him a 10-day window to veto the measure that would end on September 23. But the pages shed no significant new light on Saudi Arabia’s alleged ties to the attack.
Relatives of the almost 3,000 people killed in the September 11, 2001, attacks are due to gather in New York, Pennsylvania and outside Washington on Friday to mark the 14th anniversary of the hijacked airliner strikes carried out by al Qaeda militants. “It has not been presented to him yet”, Earnest added.
The families celebrated just days before the 15-year anniversary of the attack.
The bill, called the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), would widen sovereign immunity restrictions to allow American victims of terror attacks to sue nation-states that supported the violence. “The president does intend to veto this legislation”, Earnest told reporters at the daily briefing.
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But some members of Congress have become increasingly restive about relations with Saudi Arabia, long an important player in U.S. Middle East policy. A White House official said this week that the administration’s position has not changed even after some changes were made to the bill to mollify critics.
