A quarter-century after the September 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in the United States, a group of victims’ families is continuing a lawsuit against Saudi Arabia to hold the kingdom accountable for any role it played in the planning and execution of the plot. While the Saudi government has always denied advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, 15 of the 19 plane hijackers were Saudi citizens, including some with connections to Saudi officials and intelligence assets in the United States. Terry Strada, the national chair of 9/11 Families United, raised the issue during an official commemoration on Friday in New York while paying tribute to her husband Tom, who was killed in the World Trade Center. With Vice President JD Vance and all four living ex-presidents in the audience, Strada asked: “How can it be 25 years and still we have no justice for the role that Saudi Arabia played in your murder?”
Strada tells Democracy Now! that evidence has only grown that Saudi agents “were directly involved with providing the support network” to carry out the 9/11 attacks, and that she hopes President Donald Trump will tell the Saudi government “that they can no longer hide and that they need to confront the evidence and work things out with the families.”
