A group of families of victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is urging President Joe Biden to press Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the country’s “role in the rise of al Qaeda and 9/11 attacks.”
Recent reports suggest Biden is seeking a meeting with bin Salman in June to address global oil prices. The White House has neither confirmed nor denied the talks, but the president has sought to reframe the United States’s relationship with Saudi Arabia.
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“It is imperative that you prioritize accountability for 9/11 in any conversations between members of your administration and Saudi officials up to and including your own with the Crown Prince or any other members of the Saudi royal family,” 9/11 Families United wrote in a letter sent to the White House on Thursday morning. “Mr. President, if you were to omit September 11 from your discussions with Saudi leaders, it would signal to the world that you are willing to indulge years more of Saudi obfuscation and obstruction, and that America prioritizes the interests of foreign powers and economics more than the lives of its citizenry.”
The group called past administrations’ unwillingness to “hold the Kingdom to account” for its past relationship with al Qaeda and the 9/11 hijackers the “original sin in the U.S.-Saudi relationship and the source of the American people’s hostility to that nation.”
“The American people know the Kingdom has moral and legal culpability for 9/11 and that Saudi wrongdoers have never been held to account,” the letter concludes. “Please stand where no other President since 9/11 has stood, with the September 11 community in our pursuit for justice, and prioritize a full and complete discussion of the Saudis’ continued denial of their complicity in the attacks.”
Biden signed an executive order in 2021 declassifying documents suggesting a link between select Saudi government officials and al Qaeda, which 9/11 Families applauded on Thursday, but has failed to raise the issue with the government.
Furthermore, Biden has yet to seek retribution from bin Salman over his role in orchestrating the abduction and murder of former Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi back in 2018.
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The president is expected to travel to the Middle East later in June to help facilitate normalization talks between Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, though the National Security Council has not announced the trip.
