A group of family members of 9/11 victims has sent a letter to President Biden urging him to return the $7 billion in frozen Afghan reserves held by the US Federal Reserve to the Afghan people.
Earlier this year, President Biden signed an executive order that would make $3.5 billion of the Afghan funds available to 9/11 families. But in the letter that was sent Tuesday, 77 family members of 9/11 victims said receiving that money would be “morally wrong.”
The letter reads: “Any use of the $7 billion to pay off 9/11 family member judgments is legally suspect and morally wrong. We call on you to modify your Executive Order and affirm that the Afghanistan central bank funds belong to the Afghan people and the Afghan people alone.”
US officials said this week that the Biden administration has decided not to return any of the $7 billion to Afghanistan and suspended talks with the Taliban on the issue. One year since the Taliban’s takeover of the country, Afghanistan is facing a dire humanitarian crisis, with millions of Afghans facing starvation.
The letter says that a small number of 9/11 families sought the Afghan funds to pay off a debt from a default judgment they won against the Taliban years ago. But the 9/11 families that signed the letter argue that the money does not belong to the Taliban. “This money comes from Afghanistan’s central bank, and as such, it belongs to the Afghan people,” they said.
The letter’s signatories said that they have joined other lawsuits and do seek a “measure of justice.” But they add that “no 9/11 family member joined these lawsuits to take money away from starving Afghans.”
“We ask you to use your executive power to modify your recent order and commit to the only legally and morally correct approach – affirming that all $7 billion of the Afghan central bank funds being kept in New York belong to the Afghan people,” the letter concludes.
Incredibly cool!
Isn’t it good to know that there are a few folks who display common decency? 🙂
“But the 9/11 families that signed the letter argue that the money does not belong to the Taliban. ”
As if bin Laden & the Taliban had anything to do with 9/11 either.
Good for them! Stealing from the Afghan people to pay for a 9/11 (that they were not responsible for) makes no moral or
logical sense.
Larry Silverstein got his insurance settlement long ago
Was this an attempt to set a precedent? If it’s OK to steal from Afghanistan “for a good cause”, What could possibly be wrong with stealing from Iran, or Russia, or any other country that has had it’s funds illegally frozen?
I dont care if we return the money to Afghanistan. The sad part is that it will go directly to the Taliban and not the people who really need it. Then we’ll be here a year from now criticizing the Biden Ad for giving money to the Taliban. No one wins. Only the Taliban.
You know nothing about banking. I doubt you know anything about anything.
Lol. That is the smartest thing I have ever seen anyone write about anything.
Stop taking like an idiot. The un and uts agencies have poured in more than a billion after the fall of the puppet government and they controlled how the funds were used and us can do the same. If the don’t want de facto government of Afghanistan to get the funds they can give it the un to feed afghans.
By the sheer number of neocon infested think tanks operating in the us if taliban actually got a hold of any us disbursed funds u would know it by now.
You do know how to have friendly discussions. You definitely got all my respect and attention after calling me an idiot, Mr. i know how US foreign funds work.
As if it ever had anything to do with the 9/11 victims! The USA has plenty of money to pay the victims, if that was the issue. The Saudis, who provided most of the manpower for 9/11, have the money too. As do private charities, which have already given who knows how much to these victims.
No, the real issue is that the USA just can’t stand losing, either directly or by proxy, to national liberation forces like Castro’s army, the NVA and the Viet Minh, the Sandinistas, or the Taliban. And will endlessly begrudge the countries those forces liberate minimally decent treatment for years and even decades for having the temerity to defeat the USA or its puppet regime. Steal their money. Embargo their trade, including with secondary sanctions against other trading partners. Deny them aid, including international aid. Stir up internal opposition forces. Arm insurgents against them. Gin up problems with their US-supported neighbors. Seek to isolate them diplomatically in one to one relationships and in international agencies and instutions, and so on.
Biden defied the Blob, to some extent, by pulling the US out of Afghanistan. But, unfortunately, it now appears that that was merely a strategic move, rather than one of principle. Biden has now endeared himself to the Blob with the much more costly, much more dangerous, and much more centrally important proxy war with Russia. At the same time, he is making the Blob happy with his unshakeable support for Israel and the KSA, no matter what atrocities they commit, his refusal to undo Trump’s foolish scuttling of relations with Iran, and his petty, and cruel, refusal to give Afghanistan its money back. Concern for the 9/11 victims is just a convenient fig leaf.
Let’s get to the root here and point out that Biden’s action isn’t “legally suspect”, it’s outright theft, done with the collusion of the Federal Reserve Bank, which has no authority to take money from an account simply because somebody tells them to. Biden’s political grandstanding is just one more blow to US credibility. And the US government is finding out it doesn’t have a monopoly on either war or banking.
Consider the 7 billion as a down payment for the 80 billion of weapons left behind?
Thomas Paine is off his meds today.
No more excuses for Biden to hold on to the Stolen Money…!
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Biden refuses to return the funds to Afghanistan because one half of that money has already been distorted by corrupt DC politicians from both parties…!
Washington DC is an equal opportunity criminal enterprise. They rob everywhere and everyone who isn’t “them” . They stole from Iran, Venezuela, Libya and lately Afghanistan and Russia. $100’s of Billions. Through the monetary, banking and tax system and via inflation, Trillions of dollars has been grifted, grafted and confiscated.
For what? Hegemonic control that allows the ongoing theft.