Ruling Against Iran in Sept. 11 Case

The New York Times, 16 Dec 2011 – Lawyers representing families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks won a default judgment on Thursday against Iran, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah organization in Lebanon, the Taliban and Al Qaeda in a lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court that contended that Iranian officials aided and abetted the hijackers who flew jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The lawsuit accused the defendants, including Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei , of providing help to the attackers in a marriage of convenience between Iran’s Shiite hierarchy and the Sunni operatives of Al Qaeda, putting aside deep mutual antipathy to fight the common enemy, the United States.
The plaintiffs presented evidence that a senior Hezbollah fighter, Imad Mughniyeh, who was killed in 2008, had been an important liaison between Iran and Al Qaeda, meeting with Osama bin Laden in 1993 and introducing him to the strategy of suicide attacks that drove the Americans from Lebanon in the early 1980s.
The defendants were not represented in the lawsuit, and it is unclear how the plaintiffs would collect damages.