Iran was complicit in the 9/11 attacks in ways large and small, a federal judge in New York found Thursday in granting a default judgment in litigation brought by victims’ families.
Iran had advanced knowledge of the attacks and provided training, travel assistance and even refuge for al-Qaida before and after 9/11, U.S. District Judge George Daniels found in a 53-page “Findings of Fact.” That included Hizballah operatives, the terrorist group’s bombing mastermind Imad Mughniyeh.
While none of the defendants contested the case, the plaintiffs garnered information from a slew of experts, including three Iranian defectors and several staff members from the 9/11 Commission. Copies of affidavits from those witnesses can be seen here.
One of those witnesses, Janice Kephart, writes that the evidence shows that 9/11 was “a coordinated, state-sponsored event that probably would not have successfully occurred without the material support of Iran and Hezbollah.”
The ruling describes years of cooperation between the Shiite-Iranian government and the Sunni-dominated al-Qaida terrorist group. The alliance dates back to efforts by Sudanese Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi and was built on the two sides’ shared enemies.
