A federal appeals court in New York has heard competing arguments from lawyers representing the families of people killed in the September 11 attacks and from attorneys acting for the government of Saudi Arabia, as it decides whether a case that has dragged on for more than two decades can finally proceed toward trial.
The hearing before the Court of Appeals comes 25 years after hijackers seized four US passenger aircraft and flew them into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington, and a field in Pennsylvania, where passengers fought back against the attackers. Nearly 3,000 people died in the coordinated assaults of 11 September 2001, and the families left behind have spent much of the intervening period seeking accountability through the American courts.
At the centre of the families' claims is Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi government employee photographed in February 2000 in an image released by the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. The relatives allege that Bayoumi knowingly assisted two of the men who went on to carry out the attacks, and that he did so as part of a broader network of officials connected to the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs.
Bayoumi, who has since retired from government service, has rejected those assertions. He maintains that he was unaware the two men were hijackers and denies any involvement in the attacks themselves. The Saudi government has been equally emphatic, describing suggestions that it or its officials bore any responsibility for 9/11 as categorically false, and arguing that as a foreign sovereign state it enjoys immunity from being pursued in US courts.
That immunity question is the crux of the dispute now before the appeals judges. The families first filed their lawsuit in 2002, when such claims against foreign governments were largely blocked by legal doctrines protecting sovereign states from litigation. Recognising the difficulty the families faced, they spent several years pressing members of US Congress to change the law.
Their lobbying effort bore fruit in 2016, when Congress enacted the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, commonly known as JASTA. The legislation opened a narrow pathway allowing civil claims to be brought against a foreign state or its officials where injuries, deaths or damages result from an act of international terrorism. For the 9/11 relatives, the act offered a route around the immunity barrier that had previously kept their case from advancing.
The breakthrough they had long sought appeared to arrive in August 2025, when the Manhattan District Court ruled that the families had put forward sufficient evidence to satisfy the terms of JASTA. Judge George Daniels allowed the litigation to move forward toward a trial, a decision the families regarded as a milestone after years of legal wrangling. Saudi Arabia, however, asked the Court of Appeals on Wednesday to overturn that ruling and halt the case once more.
Arguing for the kingdom, counsel Gregory Rapawy told the panel that fundamental questions of fact remained unresolved, most importantly the precise nature of Bayoumi's employment relationship with the Saudi state. Until those issues are settled, Rapawy contended, the country cannot properly be stripped of the protections normally afforded to a foreign sovereign.
Gavin Simpson, speaking for the families, countered that the District Court had already assessed Bayoumi's conduct and concluded that it went well beyond innocent assistance or an act of kindness toward strangers. Simpson argued that Bayoumi had been acting on instructions from Saudi Arabia while helping the hijackers, and he told the judges that the kingdom had offered nothing to disprove those findings.
The three-judge panel appeared to be considering a middle course. One possibility discussed during the hearing was returning the case to the District Court so that more definitive findings of fact could be made, a process that could involve hearing testimony from live witnesses.
Judge Guido Calabresi pressed Rapawy on which witnesses Saudi Arabia might call if that were to happen. Rapawy replied that it remained to be seen whether Bayoumi himself could be summoned to testify, should his credibility become the decisive issue in the litigation.
As the session ended, Judge William Nardini acknowledged the complexity of the matter, describing it as a difficult case and stating that the panel would take the arguments under advisement, meaning a written ruling will follow at a later date.
Outside the courthouse, Terry Strada, whose husband Tom was killed when the World Trade Center collapsed, told the BBC she had come away feeling encouraged by what she had heard. She described 25 years without accountability for the murder of a loved one as an extraordinary wait, and expressed hope that the judges would uphold Judge Daniels' decision and allow the case to reach a trial. Whatever the panel decides, the outcome will shape whether families who lost relatives in the deadliest terror attack on US soil ever see their claims tested before a jury.
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