Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by takyon on Sunday April 17 2016, @12:35AM   Printer-friendly
from the idle-threat dept.

The New York Times reports (and Yahoo! News repeats without any paywall) that the government of Saudi Arabia is threatening to sell $750 billion in treasury securities and other unidentified assets if Congress passes the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act. The bill would allow foreign governments to be sued by 9/11 victims and their families. The threat was issued by Saudi Arabian foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir to unnamed US lawmakers while he was visiting Washington sometime last month, on the grounds that these assets could be in danger of being frozen by US courts.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 17 2016, @03:23PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 17 2016, @03:23PM (#333283)

    Did you read the entire article? It specifically addressed the OP's question.

    ... These efforts have largely been stymied, in part because of a 1976 law that gives foreign nations some immunity from lawsuits in American courts.

    The Senate bill is intended to make clear that the immunity given to foreign nations under the law should not apply in cases where nations are found culpable for terrorist attacks that kill Americans on United States soil. If the bill were to pass both houses of Congress and be signed by the president, it could clear a path for the role of the Saudi government to be examined in the Sept. 11 lawsuits.

    Obama administration officials counter that weakening the sovereign immunity provisions would put the American government, along with its citizens and corporations, in legal risk abroad because other nations might retaliate with their own legislation. Secretary of State John Kerry told a Senate panel in February that the bill, in its current form, would “expose the United States of America to lawsuits and take away our sovereign immunity and create a terrible precedent.”

    The bill’s sponsors have said that the legislation is purposely drawn very narrowly — involving only attacks on American soil — to reduce the prospect that other nations might try to fight back.