Taliban and 9/11 Families Fight for Billions in Frozen Afghan Funds
The New York Times
The White House must figure out what to do with the Afghan central bank’s account at the Federal Reserve, now blocked under U.S. law.
WASHINGTON — Nearly 20 years ago, about 150 family members of Sept. 11 victims sought a measure of justice for their losses by suing a list of targets like Al Qaeda and the Taliban. A decade later, a court found the defendants liable by default and ordered them to pay damages now worth about $7 billion.
But with no way to collect it, the judgment seemed symbolic.
Today, however, the Taliban is back in control of Afghanistan. The group’s leaders say their country’s central bank account at the Federal Reserve in New York, in which the former government accumulated about $7 billion from foreign aid and other sources, is rightfully theirs. And that in turn has raised a question: If the money is the Taliban’s, shouldn’t the plaintiffs in the Sept. 11 lawsuit be entitled to seize it?
