Alwaght- Iran has strongly denounced as “mockery” and “politically-motivated” a US court’s recent default ruling which ordered Tehran to pay over $6 billion in damages to 9/11 victims.
In a Sunday statement, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi, reiterated "Issuing such an absurd and unacceptable verdict mocks not only the international legal system but also the survivors and families of the victims of the September 11 attacks”.
Despite the fact that none of the 19 hijackers on September 11, 2001 was even Iranian citizens, last week, Manhattan’s District Judge George Daniels made a default ruling that found Iran liable for the deaths and ordered its entities to pay over $6 billion in compensations to the families of more than 1,000 victims.
"The architects of this political game are seeking in vain to distort realities and change the result of legal proceedings in order to alter the final verdict in a stupid way,” Iranian diplomat added.
Such efforts, the spokesman said, are aimed at hiding the role of the main culprits and rewriting the history at wish, but to no avail.
Fifteen of the plane hijackers who took part in the 9/11 terror attacks were citizens of Saudi Arabia, two were the United Arab Emirates' nationals and the remaining were from, Egypt, and Lebanon. The 9/11 Commission –the organization tasked with investigating the attacks– has said there is no evidence indicating direct Iranian involvement or suggesting that Tehran was even aware of the 9/11 plot. The only known connection is that several hijackers once allegedly travelled through Iran on their way to Afghanistan.
However, the American judge in his default verdicts ruled that Tehran somehow provided technical assistance, training and planning to terrorists.
Iran's foreign ministry underlined that the verdict stands in stark contrast to all acceptable norms of international law which call for judicial impunity for all sates in the world.
"The Islamic Republic of Iran preserves the right to respond to the illegal procedures,” he added.
The spokesman also rejected similar past verdicts against Iran, reiterating that the country had nothing to do with organizing or financing the 9/11 attacks. Previously Judge Daniels had issued default judgments against Iran, in 2011 and 2016, ordering the Islamic republic to pay billions of dollars to victims of the attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people.
