New York appeals court weighs whether 9/11 families' lawsuit against Saudi Arabia can reach trial

Lawyers for the families of people killed in the September 11 attacks and representatives of the Saudi government faced each other before the Court of Appeals in New York on Wednesday, in a hearing that could determine whether one of the longest-running legal actions in modern American history ever reaches a jury.

At the centre of the case is a single, contested question: whether Saudi Arabia, as a foreign sovereign state, enjoys immunity from being sued in United States courts, or whether an exception written into American law allows the families to press their claims for damages in front of a trial judge.

The attacks themselves are the backdrop to two decades of litigation. Nearly 3,000 people died on 11 September 2001 after hijackers seized four US passenger aircraft and flew them into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon outside Washington, and a field in Pennsylvania, where passengers fought back against the men at the controls.

The families' allegation is specific. They say Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi government employee, knowingly helped two of the hijackers and did so as part of a network of officials connected to the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs.

Bayoumi, who has since retired from government service, has rejected that account. He denies knowing that the two men he assisted were preparing an act of mass violence, and says he had no involvement whatsoever in the attacks of 11 September.

Saudi Arabia has gone further, describing any suggestion that the kingdom or its officials played a part in 9/11 as categorically false. Its legal position rests on the doctrine of sovereign immunity, which in principle shields foreign governments from being hauled before US courts.

The families have spent years trying to get around that barrier. They first filed their lawsuit in 2002, in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, and then devoted much of the following decade and a half to lobbying Capitol Hill for a change in the law.

Their efforts produced the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, which Congress passed in 2016. JASTA permits civil claims against a foreign state or its officials for injuries, death or damage arising from an act of international terrorism, effectively narrowing the immunity that countries such as Saudi Arabia had previously relied on.

Armed with that statute, the families persuaded a court in Manhattan that they had cleared the required threshold. In August 2025, the District Court ruled that the evidence presented was sufficient to satisfy the terms of the act, and that the case could therefore move forward towards a full trial.

Saudi Arabia asked the appeals panel to overturn that ruling, arguing that the lower court had acted prematurely. The kingdom's counsel, Gregory Rapawy, told the judges that fundamental questions of fact remained unresolved — above all, the precise nature of Bayoumi's employment relationship with the Saudi state.

Rapawy's submission was that those factual disputes must be settled before the country can be stripped of its immunity, since immunity is supposed to be decided before the merits of a case are examined. Until a judge determines who Bayoumi was actually working for, he suggested, the foundation of the whole action is unsettled.

Lawyers acting for the families countered that the District Court had already looked closely at Bayoumi's conduct and reached firm conclusions. Their counsel, Gavin Simpson, said the lower court had found that Bayoumi's actions could not be dismissed as those of a good Samaritan or an innocent bystander caught up in events beyond his control.

Simpson went further, arguing that Bayoumi had been following instructions from Saudi Arabia while assisting two of the men who went on to carry out the attacks. Those findings, he said, were matters that Saudi Arabia had failed to rebut with its own evidence.

The three-judge panel appeared genuinely torn over how to proceed. One option that seemed to interest the court was to send the matter back to the District Court so that more definitive findings of fact could be made, potentially involving testimony from live witnesses.

Judge Guido Calabresi pressed Rapawy on what witnesses the kingdom might actually call if the case were returned for that purpose. The lawyer's response was notably cautious: if the dispute ultimately turned on Bayoumi's own credibility, he said, "we would have to see" whether Bayoumi could be summoned to give evidence.

The hearing closed without any indication of how the panel intends to rule. Judge William Nardini acknowledged the weight of the matter, telling the courtroom that "it's a difficult case, and we will take it under advisement" — meaning a written decision will follow at a later date.

Outside the courthouse, relatives of those who died made clear how much is at stake for them. Terry Strada, whose husband Tom was killed when the World Trade Center collapsed, told the BBC that she felt positive about the way the arguments had been received.

Strada said 25 years without accountability for the murder of a loved one was an extraordinary period to endure. What the families want, she explained, is for the appeals court to uphold the decision made by District Court Judge Daniels and allow the case to proceed to a trial.

Whatever the panel decides, the ruling will carry implications well beyond this single case. It will help define how far a 2016 change in American law can be pushed against a close ally, and how many more years families bereaved by an act of international terrorism must wait for their day in court.