Lawsuit Attempts to Blame Saudi Arabia for September 11 Attacks

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars

 

A small band of lawyers is determined to pin the blame for the September 11, 2001, attacks on Saudi Arabia. The “Cozen O’Connor law firm has filed an 812-page lawsuit on behalf of U.S. and global insurance companies alleging that Saudi Arabia and Saudi-backed Islamist charities nurtured and financed al-Qaeda, the author of those deadly attacks,” reports the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News site, Philly.com. “Among the companies represented in the lawsuit are Chubb, Ace, Allstate, One Beacon, and nearly three dozen other insurers.” At the heart of the massive lawsuit, seeking to collect $5 billion in damages, is the assertion that senior Saudi officials and members of the royal family or their representatives served as executives or board members of charities suspected of financing al-Qaeda operations, activity ignored by the 9/11 white wash commission.

No doubt the commission overlooked such connections. But they also overlooked the fact al-Qaeda’s predecessor, the mujahideen, was created by the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI and Osama bin Laden, through ISI created Maktab al-Khidamar, solicited millions of dollars from wealthy Saudi citizens. “In 1988, with U.S. knowledge, bin Laden created Al Qaeda (The Base): a conglomerate of quasi independent Islamic terrorist cells spread across at least 26 countries,” writes Indian journalist Rahul Bhedi, a fact that did not figure in the final white wash report.

In fact, the CIA led the effort to collect charity money to fund al-Qaeda. “On American soil, the CIA used Muslim charities and mosque communities as fronts for recruitment of fighters in their secret war against the USSR,” Giles Foden wrote for the Guardian on September 15, 2001, citing research by author John Cooley (Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism). “In Unholy Wars, Cooley provides convincing evidence that Arab businessman and arms merchant Adnan Kashoggi had dealings with bin Laden’s father, receiving a $50,000 cheque from him. Oil broker Roy Furmark, Cooley says, provided a link between his CIA friend Casey and Kashoggi, introducing the latter to Manuchehr Ghorbanifar,” the notorious Iranian middleman who became a central figure in the arms for hostages and funds for Contras deals with Iran.

Maktab al-Khidamar, or simply MAK, “was a front for Pakistan’s CIA, the Inter-Service Intelligence Directorate. The ISI was the first recipient of the vast bulk of CIA and Saudi Arabian covert assistance for the Afghan contras. Bin Laden was one of three people who ran MAK,” writes Norm Dixon.

Of course, all of this is forbidden history, or at least has found its way to the memory hole. Now we are told “wealthy individuals” from Saudi Arabia are “sending millions of dollars to al Qaeda,” despite promises not to, according to Brian Ross of ABC News. “When the evidence is clear that these individuals have funded terrorist organizations, and knowingly done so, then that should be prosecuted and treated as real terrorism because it is,” declares Stuart Levey, the under secretary of the Treasury in charge of tracking terror financing. Not a word here about the fact this pipeline of cash siphoned off to al-Qaeda was established by the CIA and in fact the Saudis are simply doing what they have done all along, initially with the blessing of the CIA and the ISI.

As an example of the CIA working through Islamic charities, consider the case of the Global Relief Foundation (GRF), based in Illinois. In October 2002, the U.S. Treasury Department designated GFR as a terrorist-financing entity linked to al-Qaeda. The U.S. government claims GRF’s leadership had previously worked with MAK, the CIA-ISI created organization and the precursor to al-Qaeda, noted above. GFR was heavily involved in areas where the CIA conducted operations of mutual interest, including Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, as well as Kosovo.

It is interesting to note that a Muslim World League associated NGO, the International Islamic Relief Organization, mentioned as one of the culprits in the Cozen lawsuit, has offices in Zagreb, Sarajevo, Split, Ljubljana, and Tuzla, all located in areas of CIA and GFR mutual interest. Moreover, the al-Haramain Foundation, also mentioned in the lawsuit, had a rather suspicious association with the late Omar al-Faruq, said to have served as the primary liaison between al-Qaeda and Islamic terrorists in Asia. As it turns out, al-Faruq was recruited by the CIA to penetrate Muslim charity organizations, according to A.C. Manulang, the former State Intelligence Coordinating Board chief of Indonesia. Omar had a habit of breaking out of prison, including the notorious U.S. military prison at Bagram, and was supposedly killed by British troops operating in the Iraqi city of Basra. Dead men tell no tales.

But it gets even more curious. Khalid bin Mahfouz, allegedly listed on the “Golden Chain” of al-Qaeda financers discovered at the Bosnian office of the Benevolence International Foundation in 2002 — the foundation also figures prominently in the Cozen lawsuit — backed George W. Bush’s first failed oil company, Arbusto. “Mahfouz is perhaps best known for being a principal shareholder and director of BCCI, a criminal enterprise exploited by the CIA during the 1970s and 1980s for numerous covert operations, including the financing of the anti-Soviet Afghan jihad” (see Boston-area convicts linked to CIA nexus).

In short, the fingerprints of American intelligence and the Bush crime family — known for its close association with corrupt Saudis, including Bandar bin Sultan, fondly called Bandar bin Bush — are all over the underside of this multi-billion dollar lawsuit.

But don’t expect this to come out during the trial. “The showing that the plaintiffs purport to make is complete and utter garbage,” Michael Kellogg, a top Washington appeals lawyer representing Saudi Arabia and members of the royal family, declared during an appeals argument in January. “It is a collection of newspaper articles, and reports and press releases that show at most the kingdom exercises some supervisory control over the charities.”

In fact, the CIA exercises “supervisory control over the charities,” and the lawsuit will likely go absolutely nowhere because any sincere investigation will certainly bring this out and that will not be allowed, no matter the number of high powered insurance companies involved.