12 Asian LEADER
1 Jan - 14 Jan 2014
US court revives 9/11 victims’
case against Saudi Arabia
A
US appeals court
Last week revived
claims by families of
victims of the Sept 11,2001,
attacks who alleged that
Saudi Arabia provided material support to al Qaeda.
Reversing a lower court
ruling, the 2nd US Circuit
Court of Appeals in New
York said “the interests of
justice” justified reviving the
claims, in light of a 2011 decision that allowed similar
claims to proceed against Afghanistan.
Circuit Judge Chester
Straub wrote for a threejudge panel that it would be
“especially anomalous” to
treat both sets of plaintiffs
differently.
He returned the case to US
District Judge George Daniels in Manhattan for further
proceedings.
The litigation had been
brought on behalf of families of the nearly 3,000 people
killed in the Sept 11 attacks.
Michael Kellogg, a partner
at Kellogg, Huber, Hansen,
Todd,Evans & Figel representing Saudi Arabia, said
the country will “seek further review of this erroneous
decision,” which he said was
“contrary” to settled law.
“It is extremely unfortunate and burdensome that a
sovereign nation and ally of
the United States will continue to have to litigate this
matter more than 10 years
after it was filed,” he said in
a statement. Stephen Cozen,
a partner at Cozen O’Connor
representing the families, did
not immediately respond to
requests for comment.
The litigation began in
2002.
Families of Sept 11 victims had alleged that Saudi
Arabia and a governmentaffiliated charity knowingly
provided funding and other
material support to al Qaeda
that helped it carry out the
attacks.
Scope of sovereign immunity
US District Judge Richard Casey in Manhattan dismissed the claims in 2005,
saying Saudi Arabia’s alleged
wrongful activity constituted
a “discretionary function”
entitling it to immunity under the federal Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.
A 2nd Circuit panel upheld that ruling on different
grounds in 2008, but that
panel’s interpretation of
sovereign immunity law was
overruled by a different panel in the Afghanistan case.
The families in the Saudi
Arabia case then asked US
District Judge George Daniels, who took over their case
following Casey’s death in
2007, to vacate the 2005 ruling.
But Daniels refused, saying at a March 2012 hearing
that it was “pure speculation” to suggest the results
were inconsistent”given the
fact that there are different
defendants with different
sets of allegations regarding
their activities.”
Writing for the 2nd Circuit,
however, Straub said the
new law announced in the
Afghanistan case was an “extraordinary”
circumstance
to justify reviving the Saudi
Rifle designer Mikhail
Kalashnikov dead at 94
M
ikhail
Kalashnikov,
whose work as a weapons designer for the Soviet
Union is immortalized in
the name of the world’s
most popular firearm, died
Monday at the age of 94.
Kalashnikov once aspired to design farm equipment. But even though his
most famous invention, the
AK-47 assault rifle, sowed
havoc instead of crops, he
often said he felt personally
untroubled by his contribution to bloodshed.
‘’I sleep well. It’s the politicians who are to blame for
failing to come to an agreement and resorting to violence,’’ he said in 2007.
Kalashnikov died in a
hospital in Izhevsk, the
capital of the Udmurtia republic where he lived, said
Viktor Chulkov, a spokes-
man for the republic’s president.
He did not give a cause
of death. Kalashnikov had
been hospitalized for the
past month with unspecified health problems.
The AK-47, ‘’Avtomat
Kalashnikov’’ and the year
it went into production, is
the world’s most popular
firearm, favoured by guerrillas, terrorists and the
soldiers of many armies. An
estimated 100 million guns
are spread worldwide.
Though it isn’t especially
accurate, its ruggedness
and simplicity are exemplary: it performs in sandy
or wet conditions that jam
more sophisticated weapons such as the US M-16.
‘’During the Vietnam war,
American soldiers would
throw away their M-16s to
grab AK-47s and bullets for
it from dead Vietnamese
soldiers,’’ Kalashnikov said
in July 2007 at a ceremony
marking the rifle’s 60th anniversary.
The weapon’s suitability
for jungle and desert fighting made it nearly ideal
for the Third World insurgents backed by the Soviet
Union, and Moscow not
only distributed the AK-47
widely but also licensed its
production in some 30 other countries.
The gun’s status among
revolutionaries and national-liberation struggles
is enshrined on the flag of
Mozambique.
Kalashnikov, born into
a peasant family in Siberia, began his working life
as a railroad clerk. After
he joined the Red Army in
1938, he began to show mechanical flair by inventing
several modifications for
Soviet tanks.
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