HARRISBURG, PA — Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday has joined 30 other state attorneys general asking the U.S. Supreme Court to allow terrorism victims and their families to pursue $3.5 billion in frozen Taliban-linked funds to satisfy roughly $17 billion in federal court judgments.
The bipartisan coalition filed a brief supporting victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and other Americans harmed by the Taliban who have obtained judgments against the organization, some after decades of litigation.
The dispute centers on $3.5 billion in assets frozen by the U.S. Treasury Department and held in New York. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit concluded that the funds could not be used to satisfy the judgments under the circumstances at issue.
The states are challenging that interpretation at the Supreme Court, arguing that federal law permits blocked assets of a terrorist party to be used to satisfy judgments obtained by victims of terrorism.
The timing of the Treasury Department’s action is central to the dispute. According to the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office, the assets were frozen eight days before the Taliban installed a government in Afghanistan and took control of the country’s central bank.
The coalition argues that the timing does not prevent terrorism victims from reaching the assets and that the Second Circuit misinterpreted the federal statute governing enforcement of terrorism judgments.
“The victims of September 11 and their families have carried the consequences of that day for 25 years,” Sunday said. “Those who have secured judgments against the Taliban deserve the opportunity to see those judgments enforced.”
The judgments at issue total about $17 billion, according to the Attorney General’s Office. The coalition represents states whose residents were among the nearly 3,000 people killed in the Sept. 11 attacks or were subsequently killed or injured by the Taliban.
The brief does not itself award the frozen assets to the judgment holders. It asks the Supreme Court to permit enforcement of the judgments against the funds under the coalition’s interpretation of federal law.
Joining Pennsylvania are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.
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