“Our courts have our faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal.”
That was the closing argument given by Atticus Finch in Harper Lee’s timeless book “To Kill a Mockingbird.” As the story goes, it didn’t work that way. Racism was too ingrained in our society.
That frustration plays out in so many courts today, where fate is left in the hands of the very few.
That has been the sad truth for 9/11 loved ones who lost so much on that fateful day only to be rejected by the U.S. court system for justice. As the Herald wrote, federal Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein thwarted attempts to allow an open trial years ago on what went so terribly wrong on Sept. 11, 2001.
This paper wrote about the last wrongful death lawsuit tied to 9/11 settled out of court. It was September of 2011.
The Bavis family of Boston said they had no choice but to end their decade-long fight after Hellerstein ruled the trial would be limited to three weeks and it would be focused on federal regulations possibly violated — not a more powerful wrongful-death case.
“Make no mistake about it,” added Mike Bavis at the time, “the change in position of my family is sorely based on Judge Hellerstein’s ruling and manipulation of the law.”
Mark Bavis, a hockey scout from Boston and Mike’s twin, was 31 when United Airlines Flight 175 was hijacked out of Logan Airport. Others with loved ones on the three other jets and on the ground fought for a trial and failed one by one.
Most of the survivors of the nearly 3,000 killed that day took a payout from the Congressional fund set up for 9/11 victims — a pool of money still available for those now stricken with cancer for working on the toxic World Trade Center pile.
But there’s one last opportunity for justice and that rests, again, with a federal judge.
Judge George Daniels of the Southern District of New York — the same court as Hellerstein’s — now holds the key to the lawsuit against Saudi Arabia, as the Herald reported this weekend.
The plaintiffs — 10,000-strong from Boston and beyond — want to take Saudi Arabia to trial for allegedly helping 9/11 hijackers.
The Saudi government’s latest appeal states no government officials “senior or otherwise — gave any ‘direction’ to Omar Al Bayoumi or Fahad Al Thumairy to ‘assist’ … 9/11 hijackers.” Any contact, the Saudis add, was “innocent motives … to help fellow Saudis” new to San Diego.
Those “fellow Saudis” were Nawaf Al Hazmi and Khalid Al Mihdhar — the first 9/11 hijackers to set up shop in America after landing in Los Angeles, according to multiple reports. Bayoumi and Thumairy, both Saudi officials, are accused of assisting them, court documents allege.
That is the crux of this last case — with this final showdown decades in the making with a focus on the former Southern California al Qaeda cell, as the Herald has reported.
If the judge allows the case to proceed, the 9/11 families will be able to expand discovery. That means al Qaeda cells in Boston, Portland, Maine, Phoenix, Florida and New Jersey can also be investigated fully.
This time, the court must be the great leveler.
