Suit blames Saudi Arabia for attack at Florida military base
Victims of a 2019 shooting at a Florida military base and their families are suing Saudi Arabia, claiming the kingdom knew the gunman had been radicalized and that it could have prevented the killings.
The suit, filed Monday, also claims that Saudi trainees knew
in advance about plans for the shooting but did nothing to stop it.
The suit centers on the Dec. 6, 2019, shooting at Naval Air
Station Pensacola in which Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani shot and killed three U.S.
sailors. It comes nine months after U.S. officials revealed that Alshamrani, a
Saudi Air Force officer, had communicated with al-Qaida operatives about
planning and tactics in the weeks leading up to the attack and that he had been
radicalized abroad before coming to the U.S. to participate in a military
training program.
The lawsuit casts a wide net of blame beyond Alshamrani. It
alleges, for instance, that Saudi Arabia knew about Alshamrani’s associations
with al-Qaida and his radicalization and yet failed to monitor, supervise or
report him. It also says the gunman told fellow Saudi trainees at a dinner
party the night before the attack that he planned to carry out the shooting the
following day, but instead of reporting it, they called out sick morning of the
killings. One recorded the shootings while standing outside the building; two
others watched from a car nearby.
“None of the Royal Saudi Air Force trainees at the scene of
the attack reported Al-Shamrani’s behavior nor did they try to stop” it, the
lawsuit says. “Because they supported it.”
The complaint also says Alshamrani’s Saudi trainees were
aware that he had purchased and stored firearms and ammunition in his barracks,
and that he had posted and shared extremist material on social media and
screened videos of mass shootings before the attack.
“Al-Shamrani was a Trojan Horse sent by his country, the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and its proxy, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, for
flight training at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida, under the auspices of
a program tied to billions of dollars in military arms sales from the United
States to the Kingdom,” the lawsuit states. “Little did the American people
know that such an arrangement would soon devolve into a horrific, Faustian
bargain.”
One month after the shooting, then-Attorney General William
Barr announced that 21 Saudi trainees found to have had jihadist or
anti-American sentiments on social media pages or “contact with child
pornography” were being sent home.
The complaint seeks monetary damages against Saudi Arabia
under an exemption of the law that allows for lawsuits against foreign
countries arising from acts of terrorism. Though then-President Donald Trump
told reporters that he had spoken with Saudi Arabia’s king and that the kingdom
would help the victims’ families “very greatly,” the kingdom breached the
agreement by failing to compensate or engage with them, according to the
lawsuit.
The suit comes as the Biden administration has signaled a
tougher stance on Saudi Arabia after a mostly cozy relationship for the last
four years between Trump and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Earlier this
month, President Joe Biden made good on a campaign commitment to end U.S.
support for a five-year Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen. He made clear,
however, that the U.S. would not completely abandon military assistance for the
kingdom.
The lawsuit was filed in the Northern District of Florida on
behalf of the families of the three who were killed and 13 others who were
injured, including sheriff’s deputies. A spokesperson for the Saudi embassy in
Washington did not immediately return an email seeking comment Monday.
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