Plaintiffs claim Saudi Binladin Group helped fund bin Laden's militant activities leading up to the 2001 attacks.
By REUTERSBin Laden 311 (R)(photo credit: REUTERS)
NEW YORK - A Saudi construction firm founded in the 1930s by the father of the late al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden cannot be sued for damages over the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, a US judge ruled on Wednesday.Manhattan federal court judge George Daniels ruled against plaintiffs who said the Saudi Binladin Group, one of the largest construction firms in Saudi Arabia, helped fund bin Laden's militant activities leading up to the 2001 attacks.RELATED:9/11 service pays tribute to close ties between Israel, USThe move dismisses claims against the Binladin Group in six different lawsuits in which survivors, relatives and others are seeking damages from defendants they accuse of aiding the attacks.The judge ruled that the Binladin Group's "alleged support of Osama bin Laden before 1993 is too temporally remote to establish jurisdiction."Any activity a subsidiary of the Binladin Group may have had in the United States prior to the Sept. 11 attacks, which killed close to 3,000 people, was also too thin to justify jurisdiction over it, the judge ruled.
Bin Laden, who was killed by US forces last May in Pakistan, was removed as a shareholder of his family's construction business in 1993, the court order said.Bin Laden, who was stripped of Saudi citizenship and whose family ultimately disowned him, was born in Saudi Arabia in 1957, one of more than 50 children of millionaire Saudi Binladin group founder Mohammed Binladin. The family became prominent thanks to an oil-fuelled construction boom.
Related TagsSeptember 11osama bin laden
if(catID != 151){
var cont = `Take Israel home with the new Jerusalem Post Store
