September 11 victims cannot seize Afghan Central Bank assets - US judge

A US judge, on Tuesday, said victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks are not entitled to seize billions of dollars of assets belonging to Afghanistan’s Central Bank to satisfy court judgments they obtained against the Taliban, Reuters reports.

US District Judge, George Daniels, in Manhattan said he was “constitutionally restrained” from finding that the Taliban was Afghanistan’s legitimate government, a requirement for attaching assets belonging to the Central Bank, Da Afghanistan Bank.

“The judgment creditors are entitled to collect on their default judgments and be made whole for the worst terrorist attack in our nation’s history, but they cannot do so with the funds of the Central Bank of Afghanistan,” Daniels wrote.

The decision is a defeat for four groups of creditors that sued many defendants, including Al-Qaeda, they held responsible for the September 11 attacks, and obtained default judgments after the defendants failed to show up in court.

Lawyers for the groups had no immediate comment, or did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Daniels adopted findings of US Magistrate Judge, Sarah Netburn, who had last August also recommended that the creditors not recover from the Afghan Bank.

READ: US plans to free half of $7bn frozen Afghan funds for aid, remainder to stay in US