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US House approves bill allowing lawsuits over 9/11 attacks

The House has passed a bill allowing victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to sue Saudi Arabia over the country’s alleged roles in the incidents.

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The bill, which passed the Senate unanimously in May, now heads to President Barack Obama’s desk.

“It’s hard to imagine the President signing this legislation”, according to a statement made by White House press secretary Josh Earnest, referring to the 9/11 bill.

The bill, known as the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, will authorize USA courts to hear cases against foreign states for injuries or death resulting from an act of global terrorism by reducing the states’ scope of foreign sovereign immunity.

While there was already substantial support for the bill in Congress, there was also momentum gained in July with the release of the classified “28 pages” of the 9/11 Report, which centered on Saudi government involvement in the attack.

CNN reports that the White House has continued to strongly indicate how President Obama will veto this bill to avoid harming diplomatic relations.

The Senate version of JASTA, proposed by John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Charles Schumer (D-New York), was approved in May by 100 votes to zero. The Obama administration cautions that if USA citizens can sue the Saudis, then a foreign country could then in turn sue the United States. The White House has expressed opposition to the measure. The new bill doesn’t require such a designation, which would allow suits against Saudi Arabia, according to a Wall Street Journal op-ed (sub. req.) that opposes the bill. They showed no new information linking Saudis to the attackers.

Saudi Arabia has threatened to dump hundreds of billions of dollars of USA assets if Congress passes the law.

The bill passed by a voice vote two days before the 15th anniversary of the attacks.

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“In fact what they [Congress] are doing is stripping the principle of sovereign immunities which would turn the world for worldwide law into the law of the jungle”, Minister Adel Al-Jubeir said in May in a statement”. It would override the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which grants immunity to countries that aren’t designated state sponsors of terrorism. A document released previous year stated that al-Bouyoumi has “ties to the Saudi Government and many in the local Muslim community in San Diego believed that he was a Saudi intelligence officer”.

The 9/11 attack on New York's World Trade Center