US President Barack Obama on 23 September 2016 vetoed a bill that would have allowed the families of 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia.
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The administration also claims that “American officials could now be sued in foreign courts over US military or diplomatic actions overseas.[posing] a threat to national security”, according to WaPo.
The bill’s proponents are disputing those concerns.
“As drafted, the JASTA would allow private litigation against foreign governments in USA courts based on allegations that such foreign government’s actions overseas made them responsible for terrorism- related injuries in US soil”, President Obama said.
From the beginning of the legislation’s life, the president said that he would veto the bill, but there was hope that once he saw the massive support for the bill, he would reconsider.
In a statement accompanying his veto message, Obama said on Friday he had “deep sympathy” for the 9/11 victims’ families and their desire to seek justice for their relatives.
The Washington Post writes:”Congressional leaders plan to hold override votes in the coming days and supporters of the legislation say they are confident they can succeed in overturning the president’s action”.
“The president’s not blind to the politics of this situation”, Earnest added, noting that opposing a bill championed by 9/11 families is “politically inconvenient”.
Fifteen of the 19 men who carried out the attacks were Saudi nationals. The Saudi government held $117 billion in U.S. Treasury debt in March, according to Treasury figures obtained by Bloomberg.
The bill’s apparently strong odds of an override point to USA lawmakers’ increasing willingness to pull back on historically close ties with Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest exporter of oil and a prominent global funder of fundamentalist religious doctrine.
The Senate’s top Republican, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said earlier this week that “our assumption is that the veto will be overridden”.
Even so, the separate 9/11 commission, chaired by former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean, concluded, “Saudi Arabia has always been considered the primary source of al Qaeda funding, but we have found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization”.
Senator Charles Schumer (D-New York) called the veto a “disappointing decision”.
JASTA would be a special case abrogation of sovereign immunity, a legal premise that allows governments to do whatever they want without fear of legal repercussions from individuals.
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Still, some members from both parties have called for Congress to delay its planned override vote so that lawmakers could try to renegotiate the bill with the White House. President Obama has warned that the precedent of allowing American victims to sue the Saudis for their role in the deadly 9/11 attack would also potentially open up the USA to lawsuits for its own substantial back catalogue of misdeeds. He said he opposes the legislation.
