Justice for the Forgotten Families of 9/11

Nearly twenty-five years after 9/11, the families of the victims are still waiting for justice.

The president of the United States said in a dramatic speech at the White House that the families of those killed on September 11, 2001, "should have to wait no longer" and that "we have a duty to bring those responsible for these crimes to justice." But that was not Joe Biden in 2022, or Donald Trump in 2017, or even Barack Obama in 2012— it was George W. Bush in 2006.

While most of America has moved on through four presidential administrations while images of those devastating attacks fade from memory, the families of 9/11 are still waiting for some kind of accountability.

Since that devastating day, there has not been one conviction of anyone involved in planning or facilitating the attacks. Five “high value detainees” with direct connections to the plot have been at Guantanamo for years, but all they’ve had are preliminary hearings and delays. Part of the challenge is that many of their confessions were obtained under torture at CIA “black sites” overseas between 2002–2006.

Moreover, there has been no true assessment of Saudi complicity, even though 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, and it is clear that several Saudi operatives in the U.S. assisted some of the hijackers when they got here. Did they do so officially? Under orders? That’s still undetermined, but there’s a mountain of circumstantial evidence. The families are so exasperated that they’ve filed a lawsuit against the kingdom.

Justice for the Forgotten Families of 9/11 is about the quest for justice by the families of the victims a quarter-century after the worst terrorist attack in US history.