Federal Magistrate Advises Against Paying 9/11 Victims With Afghan Money Held at New York Fed

A federal judge has advised against allowing victims of the 9/11 terror attacks to tap some $3.5 billion in Afghan funds frozen by the Biden administration after the Taliban took over the country last year.In an opinion issued late Friday, the magistrate judge, Sarah Netburn, said that releasing the funds to parties who won judgments in court against the Taliban would amount to a de facto recognition that the group is the legitimate government of Afghanistan.The constitution gives the president the sole right to recognize foreign governments, she said. President Biden has so far refused to recognize the Taliban’s authority in Afghanistan.“The Taliban’s victims have fought for years for justice, accountability, and compensation,” Ms. Netburn wrote. “They are entitled to no less. But the law limits what compensation the Court may authorize and those limits put the [Afghanistan Central Bank’s] assets beyond its authority.”The 43-page report and opinion relates to several lawsuits pending before the U.S. District Court in New York in which plaintiffs won judgments worth billions of dollars against the Taliban for the group’s role in the terror attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon more than 20 years ago.The plaintiffs — among them Fiona Havlish, whose husband died at the World Trade Center, other relatives of victims, and insurance companies who paid out billions in claims related to the attacks — had sought to access a portion of some $7 billion in assets belonging to the central bank of Afghanistan sitting in the New York Federal Reserve Bank.Most of the money is believed to have come from international donors or the savings of Afghan citizens. The Biden administration froze the funds on the day the Taliban took Kabul in August 2021.In February, President Biden issued an executive order stating that $3.5 billion of the money would be freed up to help alleviate an economic crisis that has plagued the country since the Taliban takeover. The remaining $3.5 billion, the order stated, would remain at the New York Fed.The executive order set off a scramble among attorneys representing the various plaintiffs in at least four court cases dating back more than a decade. The plaintiffs in Havlish v. Bin Laden, as one of the cases is known, won a $2 billion judgment in 2011, and the insurers won a $9 billion judgment in 2006, none of which has been paid to date.After the money at the New York Fed was frozen, lawyers for plaintiffs in the cases attempted to gain access to the money to settle the debt. In her ruling Friday, however, Ms. Netburn stated that the money in question belongs not to the Taliban but the nation of Afghanistan and its central bank, neither of which were parties to the lawsuits.The judge’s opinion is not binding on the court. The judge supervising the litigation, George Daniels of the Southern District of New York, is expected to issue a final ruling in the next several weeks. If he rules in accordance with Ms. Netburn, the families are expected to appeal.Other surviving relatives of the 9/11 attacks have pleaded with President Biden to release all the funds to help stem what they called a humanitarian disaster unfolding in Afghanistan. In her report, Ms. Netburn called the situation on the ground there a “humanitarian crisis of catastrophic proportions.”In a letter to Mr. Biden earlier this month, the survivors — who are not party to the Havlish case or any of the others — said that releasing the money to U.S. plaintiffs would be “legally suspect and morally wrong.“Victims of terrorism, including 9/11 victims, are entitled to their day in court,” the letter said. “But they are not entitled to money that lawfully belongs to the Afghan people.“We all lost loved ones on September 11th and call upon you to return the Afghan Central Bank funds to the Afghan people,” the letter asked of Mr. Biden. “This is their money, not ours.”

Federal Magistrate Advises Against Paying 9/11 Victims With Afghan Money Held at New York Fed

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