National chairwoman of 9/11 Families and Survivors United for Justice Against Terrorism Terry Strada told Hill.TV that both Republican and Democratic administrations have taken the side of Saudi Arabia in the lawsuit on Riyadh’s alleged role in the terror attack.
“They have sided with the Saudis more than they have sided with the 9/11 families. They’ve all handled it the same”, she said, adding that “Democrat, Republican, past administrations, they usually side with the Saudis”.
Strada, whose husband was killed in the 9/11 attacks, claimed that incumbent President Donald Trump had not “done anything, to my knowledge, that has hurt us”, saying that POTUS supported the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), a 2016 federal law, before he was elected.
READ MORE: DOJ Turned Blind Eye to Complaint About Murky Saudi Lobbying on 9/11 Law
The legislation passed Congress but was vetoed by former President Barack Obama, who said that it could set a precedent that would allow the United States to be sued by individuals in other countries who claimed they had been harmed by Washington’s actions.
“Obama, he vetoed the bill that we needed to pass, and we came back and overrode his veto. Unanimously we passed it out of the Senate, unanimously out of the House, and then we came back with a veto override, his one and only veto override of his entire presidency”.
Riyadh has consistently denied any involvement in the attacks, while a lawsuit by victims’ families alleged that the kingdom’s Embassy had paid for two Saudi nationals to fly from Phoenix to Washington two years before the hijackings.
On 11 September 2011, al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked airplanes to bring down the twin towers of New York City’s World Trade Centre and attack the Pentagon. The death toll following the worst attack in the history of the United States reached 3,000.
