Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

Media Release Thursday, 15 September 2016

Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary
PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058
Phone: 1800 636 432
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://cec.cecaust.com.au

Turnbull government must demand Obama not block justice for victims of 9/11

US President Barack Obama has said he will veto the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) that the US Congress passed unanimously on 9 September. JASTA would allow the victims of the 9/11 attack to bring lawsuits in US courts against the government of Saudi Arabia for its supporting role in the 9/11 attack. Saudi Arabia’s role was confirmed in the just-released 28 pages of the 2002 US Congressional Joint Inquiry Report on 9/11, which were suppressed for almost 14 years.

The Australian media has blacked out the 28 pages, until today: news.com.au has posted a NY Post article by investigative reporter Paul Sperry, “Despite ‘28 pages’ release, Saudi’s 9/11 involvement still buried”.

The Turnbull government must speak up for the 10 Australians who were killed on 9/11, and demand Obama not veto JASTA. This is also an issue for the 88 Australians killed and the many more injured in the 2002 Bali bombings, who too are victims of the global terrorist network sponsored from Saudi Arabia. If JASTA becomes law, lawsuits against Saudi Arabia would enable the courts to order the release of literally hundreds of thousands of pages of documented evidence held by US government agencies, blowing the lid off the entire Saudi-spawned terrorism apparatus that includes al-Qaeda, ISIS, and the numerous jihadist groups terrorising Libya, Syria and many other nations in Africa and Asia.

Why have successive US governments covered up this evidence, and instead continued to ally with Saudi Arabia? Even more damning, why have the USA, UK and France—and implicitly Australia—allied with the actual terrorist organisations supported out of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states such as Qatar, including the same al-Qaeda that killed nearly 3,000 people on 9/11, in “regime change” operations against Libya—just condemned by a Foreign Affairs Select Committee of the UK Parliament—and Syria? Especially as the Saudis themselves have ceased making flat-out denials and are now admitting their decades-long sponsorship of Islamist terrorism, according to former US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, reported in a 14 September Politico column, “‘We Misled You’: How the Saudis Are Coming Clean on Funding Terrorism”.

The truth, which the US government is covering up, is that it isn’t just the Saudis; the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has employed a strategy of sponsoring terrorism in partnership with a far more significant kingdom, of which the Saudis are a client—the United Kingdom. The British sponsorship of terrorism is well documented: back on 11 January 2000, the CEC’s American associates at Lyndon LaRouche’s Executive Intelligence Review magazine, submitted a memorandum to US Secretary of State Madeline Albright entitled “Put Britain on the List of States Sponsoring Terrorism”.

The 28 pages reveal the US end of a money trail of financing for the 9/11 attack that starts with the British government! The 28 pages record that the money Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to the USA, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, paid to the Saudi agents in San Diego who assisted two of the 9/11 hijackers, came from his account at the Riggs Bank in Washington DC; a 7 June 2007 Guardian newspaper report exposed that the UK Serious Fraud Office’s investigation of the British-Saudi al-Yamamah oil-for-arms deal had stumbled across regular payments that BAE Systems made to Prince Bandar in corrupt kickbacks, which were transferred from a confidential account at the Bank of England administered by the UK Ministry of Defence into Prince Bandar’s account at the Riggs Bank! Once the SFO started questioning these payments, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair shut the investigation down.

When the US Senate passed JASTA unanimously in May, Conservative MP and former adviser to the UK’s Chief of the Defence Staff, Tom Tugendhat, expressed extreme concern in a 5 June Telegraph article, “Why a US law to let 9/11 families sue Saudi Arabia is a threat to Britain and its intelligence agencies”. Tugendhat admitted that JASTA could have “serious unintended consequences for Britain” as some accuse the UK government of an approach towards Islamist extremism, for which the nation acquired the nickname “Londonistan”, that has “spawned terrorism”.

Obviously this British role is not just a sensitive issue for the United States, but also for Australia. However, it is time for citizens of all of our nations to stop turning a blind eye to such criminality at the highest levels, which has had such a devastating impact on the world over the 15 years since 9/11. We must demand accountability for these crimes, so we can achieve justice for the victims of terrorism, and peace and security for the world.

Accountability starts with JASTA: the CEC calls on all Australians to join us in demanding the Turnbull government deliver the message to Obama that he must not veto this chance to defeat terrorism and bring its perpetrators and sponsors to justice.

Click here for a free literature pack on the fight against international terrorism, including: the CEC’s pamphlet To Stop a Near-Term Terror Attack, Read the ‘28 Pages’!; and a special issue of the Australian Alert Service featuring “Londonistan: the British strategy of international terrorism”, a summary of evidence of the British government’s complicity in terrorism, compiled by British investigative reporter Mark Curtis.

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