The family of Sept. 11 victims sued Al Qaeda and the Taliban in order to get justice for their losses. The defendants were ordered to pay $7 billion in damages by a court a decade later.
The judgment seemed symbolic because it was not possible to collect it.
The Taliban are back in control of Afghanistan. The leaders of the group say that their country's central bank account at the Federal Reserve in New York is rightfully theirs, as the former government accumulated $7 billion from foreign aid and other sources. If the money is the Taliban's, shouldn't the people in the Sept. 11 lawsuit be able to seize it?
The answer to that question is being debated by high-level officials in the Biden administration, which presents a complex knot of national security, legal, diplomatic and political problems.
The United States may be able to sidestep a legal requirement to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate Afghan government in order to use the money in the central bank account to help resolve the Sept. 11 families claim.
The United States grapples with broader issues arising from the end of the American military presence in Afghanistan as the administration prepares to tell a court what outcome would be in the national interest. Humanitarian aid that might prevent a mass exodus of migrants is included.
The Justice Department is in talks with the lawyers for the Sept. 11 victims about a potential deal to divide the money if the government supports their attempt to seize it.
Two people in the lawsuit, one of which was the husband of a pilot on one of the hijacked planes, said the administration should help them.
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The widow of a pilot on one of the hijacked planes that flew into the World Trade Center won a $7 billion judgment against the Taliban.
They said they spent many years fighting to get justice for their husbands. We obtained an enforceable money judgment against the Taliban and now call on President Biden to ensure that the funds we have attached go to us and not the terrorists who played a role in taking the lives of our loved ones.
At a time when the West is trying to get the Taliban to behave differently than it did when it last ran that country, transferring the Afghan central bank reserves is sure to infuriate them. The Taliban want access to the funds.
The National Security Council declined to provide a statement for this article, and it's not clear what the U.S. government can do.
The New York Federal Reserve blocked access to the Afghan central bank account after the Taliban took control of the country. Under longstanding counterterrorism sanctions imposed on the Taliban, it is illegal to engage in financial transactions with them.
Lawyers for the families in the old default judgment case persuaded a judge to order the transfer of money to pay off the debt. The legal department of the Federal Reserve of New York was served with a writ of execution by a United States marshal.
A group of State Department contractors who were injured in a terrorist attack in Afghanistan are trying to seize a portion of the funds to pay off a $138 million default judgment against them.
The Justice Department has the power to inject the government into any pending litigation and inform the court about how the United States views its interests. Court documents show that the litigation has been frozen.
The lawyers for the plaintiffs started negotiations with the Justice Department. The people familiar with the matter said that they have proposed a deal to divide the $7 billion among three groups if the Biden administration backs them in court.
Some of the money would be kept by the holders of the default judgment, while the rest was diverted to two other purposes.
Some of the remaining money would go to people who were not part of the lawsuit, and others who were not paid from the compensation fund.
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There is a memorial plaza in Lower Manhattan. Thousands of spouses and children of those killed in the 9/11 attacks have not received payments from a compensation fund set up by Congress.
The other portion would go to organizations that provide food and medicine to people in Afghanistan. This could be a lawful way to use the blocked central bank funds so that they could be spent quickly on humanitarian assistance.
The people familiar with the discussions said the numbers remain subject to negotiation, and that it is not clear how much money would go into each of the pots. The proposed deal wouldn't give any money to other relatives of Sept. 11 victims.
A person familiar with the matter said that the Biden team has four priorities.
The person said that the administration decided that no money from the Afghan government's reserves would go to the Taliban.
The person said that the Biden administration recognizes that Afghanistan has a serious humanitarian problem and that some of the reserves should be used to address it.
The administration sees the claims by the terrorist attack victims as legitimate and believes that they need to be addressed through those funds as well.
The person said that the Biden administration will not recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, a step that would have legal and diplomatic consequences. As circumstances warrant, it will address that question on its own timetable.
Several people familiar with the matter said it might not be necessary to recognize the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan in order to seize the central bank funds. They said that a judge could find that the organization had enough interest in the funds to seize them.
The Taliban have been lobbying to gain access to Afghan central bank funds in the US and Europe. The acting foreign Taliban affairs minister wrote a letter to the United States Congress imploring them to release the funds, saying there was no justification in blocking them now that the war is over.
He said that the government should unfreeze the capital because they believe that freezing Afghan assets can't resolve the problem. If the current situation in Afghanistan continues, the Afghan government and people will face problems and will become a cause for mass migration in the region and world, which will create further humanitarian and economic issues for the world.
The United States would continue to provide humanitarian aid to the Afghan people, even as the American government rejected the Taliban's message, according to a statement by Thomas West, the special representative for Afghanistan.
Mr. West said that they have provided $474 million this year, applauded the robust efforts of Allies and partners in this space, and are making every effort to help the UN and humanitarian actors scale up to meet needs this winter.
The issue of how to direct more humanitarian aid to Afghanistan is said to be a particular problem in light of the political sensitivities of asking Congress for more money and strong policy opposition within the Biden administration to any transfer of funds to the Taliban itself.
If a judge rules that it would not be lawful to use the Afghan government assets to satisfy the judgments against the Taliban, the Biden administration is considering another option.
If someone is deemed to be an authorized representative of the Afghan central bank, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control could grant a license to transfer funds to non-governmental organizations in Afghanistan. It is difficult to determine who that person would be.
