FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contacts
[email protected]
410-576-7009
BALTIMORE, MD – Attorney General Anthony G. Brown today joined a bipartisan group of 31 state attorneys general in filing an amicus brief at the Supreme Court of the United States supporting victims and families of victims of September 11, 2001, in their effort to collect on court judgments against the Taliban. The brief asks the Supreme Court of the United States to take up the case.
The states represented in the coalition have citizens who were among the nearly 3,000 people killed on September 11, 2001, and other Americans killed or maimed by the Taliban since. Some of those citizens, and the estates of others, won approximately $17 billion in final judgments against the Taliban, entered by federal courts, many after more than two decades of litigation.
“Sixty-nine Marylanders were among the nearly 3,000 people who lost their lives on 9/11,” said Attorney General Brown. “We are urging the Supreme Court to hear this case so that families and survivors of that horrific day can collect what they are owed from billions in frozen Taliban assets.”
Despite those judgments, the Second Circuit has now told those attempting to collect on those judgments that $3.5 billion in Taliban-controlled funds sitting a few blocks from Ground Zero is beyond their reach because the United States Department of the Treasury froze the funds eight days before the Taliban-controlled government took over the country’s central bank. The coalition argues that the Second Circuit’s ruling is a misreading of the statute.
In short, Congress has said that in every case in which a person has won a judgment against a terrorist because of an act of terrorism, any assets in the United States, including the blocked assets of that terrorist party, can be used to fulfill that judgment. The coalition argues that simple rule applies here, regardless of when the Taliban government took over Afghanistan.
Joining Attorney General Brown in filing the brief are the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
###