Documents related to a lawsuit heard last week by a federal court in New York suggest that Iran and Hezbollah were involved in the 9/11 terror attacks, the London-based Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat reported Tuesday.
According to the documents, some of the terrorists who carried out the attacks on September 11 had visited Iran prior to the attacks without getting their passports stamped when entering the country. In addition, the documents revealed that Hezbollah provided the terrorists with aid and instructed them about the attack.
The court ordered Iran to pay about $11 billion in compensation to the victims’ families, so that each family would receive $1 million dollar, and about $3 billion to insurance companies that were financially damaged following the attack.
However, the ruling is a default judgement, meaning that Iran did not show up in court to defend the claims. Therefore, it may prove difficult for the plaintiffs to collect the compensation awarded to them by the court.
It was not certain if the US government would be in support of the ruling, as Washington has never accused Iran or Hezbollah of involvement in the 9/11 attacks.
The lawsuit heard last week by a federal court in New York was submitted in 2011 by the family of Fiona Havlish, whose husband, Donald was killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11. Among the defendants were then-al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden, Taliban leader Mullah Omar, Hezbollah and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Havlish ‘s lawsuit detailed 274 instances of Iran’s alleged role in terror-funding and its cooperation with terror organizations such as al-Qaida.
The court’s ruling might exacerbate the tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia, because while Iran pays a high price, the judge in the case rejected a request from the families to obligate Saudi Arabia to pay compensation, claiming that there is no evidence that the kingdom funded the attacks
