District Court Denies Saudi Arabia’s Motion to Dismiss 9/11 Claims

 

“World Trade Center 9/11/01 attack memorial photo”

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On August 28, 2025, Judge George B. Daniels (Southern District of New York) denied the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s (KSA) motion to dismiss claims arising from the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In In re Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001, Judge Daniels concluded that the plaintiffs had presented sufficient evidence to establish an exception to KSA’s immunity from suit under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA). Specifically, the plaintiffs had shown that two KSA employees in the United States acted within the scope of their employment in providing assistance to two of the 9/11 hijackers.

JASTA

Victims of the 9/11 attacks, their representatives, and various companies that suffered damages sued KSA in 2003, alleging that it had assisted the hijackers in various ways. In 2004, KSA moved to dismiss on the ground that it was immune from suit under the FSIA.

The FSIA has a territorial tort exception, 28 U.S.C. § 1605(a)(5). Judge Richard Casey, to whom the case was originally assigned, dismissed an earlier set of claims against KSA on the ground that its alleged actions involved a discretionary function. Judge Daniels later held that the territorial tort exception did not apply because some of KSA’s alleged conduct occurred outside the United States.

The FSIA also has an exception for state sponsors of terrorism, 28 U.S.C. § 1605A. But this exception applies only to countries designated by the U.S. government as state sponsors of terrorism. Saudi Arabia has never been so designated.

Frustrated by this state of affairs, Congress enacted the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) in 2016. Among other things, JASTA created a new terrorism exception to the FSIA, 28 U.S.C. § 1605B, which provides:

A foreign state shall not be immune from the jurisdiction of the courts of the United States in any case in which money damages are sought against a foreign state for physical injury to person or property or death occurring in the United States and caused by—

(1) an act of international terrorism in the United States; and

(2) a tortious act or acts of the foreign state, or of any official, employee, or agent of that foreign state while acting within the scope of his or her office, employment, or agency, regardless where the tortious act or acts of the foreign state occurred.

Although JASTA requires “an act of international terrorism in the United States,” it does not require that the foreign state’s tortious acts occurred in the United States. Nor is JASTA limited to designated state sponsors of terrorism. Congress passed JASTA specifically to allow the 9/11 claims to move forward.

Judge Daniels’s Decision

As Judge Daniels summarized, “there are four elements to the JASTA exception: (1) injury, (2) scope of employment, (3) causation, and (4) damages.” KSA did not dispute the first and fourth elements. In 2018, Judge Daniels held that plaintiffs had adequately alleged causation. That left only “the scope of employment element, i.e., whether an employee or agent of Saudi Arabia committed the tortious act, while acting within their scope of employment.” He ordered jurisdictional discovery on this question, which stretched over several years, supervised by Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn.

The plaintiffs had shown, Judge Daniels concluded, that two KSA employees, Omar al Bayoumi and Al Fahad Thumairy, provided support to two of the 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar, during their time in Southern California. Officially, Bayoumi was a civil servant with KSA’s civil aviation agency who came to the United States for education and moved to San Diego to work as an accountant and data technician. Thumairy was employed by the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, which assigned him to serve as the imam of the King Fahad Mosque in Los Angeles.

To summarize Judge Daniels’s extensive findings, the hijackers arrived in Los Angeles in January 2000, where they met Thumairy. Two weeks later, Bayoumi came to Los Angeles to meet them. The hijackers then moved to San Diego, where Bayoumi helped them find an apartment and co-signed their lease. Around this time, Bayoumi made multiple phone calls to Thumairy, the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles, and the Saudi embassy in Washington. In March, Bayoumi took a trip to Saudi Arabia and his pay doubled. During the rest of 2000, the hijackers moved several times and continued to receive assistance from people associated with Bayoumi or the King Fahad Mosque. Among the evidence recovered from Bayoumi in September 2001 was a sketch of an airplane with numbers and calculations.

“When viewed as a whole,” Judge Daniels wrote, “the total evidence creates a reasonable inference that [Bayoumi’s and Thumairy’s] employment was more than what their official job titles suggest. For example, Bayoumi had frequent interactions with the hijackers from January to May 2000 that involved important logistical events for the hijackers’ settlement into the U.S. Besides the material assistance Bayoumi himself provided, he also seemed to serve as a connecting point between the hijackers and many other people who had provided assistance to the hijackers at one point or another.” As for Thumairy, Judge Daniels found it significant that the hijackers chose to come initially to Los Angeles. The evidence of phone calls “suggests, assuming Bayoumi was likely employed by KSA to assist the hijackers, [that] Thumairy was coordinating with Bayoumi to some degree for the same goal.”

Applying New York law, Judge Daniels also found that Bayoumi and Thumairy were acting within the scope of their employment in assisting the hijackers. “According to Bayoumi’s own testimony,” Judge Daniels noted, “while it was common in the Islamic community to help out newcomers at the great lengths he went to assist the hijackers, he could not himself from his experience think of another example. Common sense suggests that assisting hijackers in the specific ways Bayoumi did was surely unusual for someone employed as an accountant or data processing technician. It is, however, plausibly common for someone employed to provide logistical assistance to the hijackers.” Bayoumi’s actions were also foreseeable by his employer, as confirmed by numerous phone calls with KSA officials and the doubling of his pay.

Bayoumi also had knowledge of the tortious acts, the court found. “Most tellingly, the drawing of an airplane with equations related to the height and distance of a plane’s flight path, for which he could not come up with any reasonable explanation, facially connects Bayoumi with knowledge of the 9/11 Attacks.” Although there was less evidence of Thumairy’s knowledge, he did meet with the hijackers at the mosque at least once soon after their arrival in the United States and he spoke with Bayoumi several times by phone before the hijackers’ arrival.

In summary, Judge Daniels wrote, “Plaintiffs have managed to provide this Court with reasonable evidence as to the roles played by Bayoumi, Thumairy, and KSA, in assisting the hijackers. KSA did not proffer sufficient evidence to the contrary. Although KSA attempts to offer seemingly innocent explanations or context, they are either self-contradictory or not strong enough to overcome the inference that KSA had employed Bayoumi and Thumairy to assist the hijackers.”

Conclusion

Judge Daniels was careful to note that his decision is limited to establishing KSA’s lack of immunity and thus that the district court has subject matter jurisdiction. Plaintiffs will still have to prove all the elements of liability at trial. But the decision is still significant because, if sustained on appeal, it will allow the plaintiffs their day in court, more than twenty-four years after the 9/11 attacks.