The DMI Trust was found not guilty

[tangaroa]

The Dar Al-Maal Al-Islami (DMI) Trust is one of several suspects whom authors have accused of funding the September 11 attacks of 2001, yet were found innocent in their trials. There have been several cases like this in the US and Europe where either the authors were working from bad information or their good information was inadmissible in court or the defendants had bought really good lawyers or judges. The past leaders of DMI have included al-Qaeda organizer Hassan al-Turabi, and Muslim Brotherhood leader Yusuf Qaradawi was an early advisor. This is enough evidence to bomb them, but not to win a conviction in a court of law.

DMI's lawyers declare the company's complete innocence:

In 2010, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed all claims against the two companies, ruling that the plaintiffs had shown nothing to indicate that they ever did anything more or less than engage in routine banking services ...

On April 16, 2013, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the rulings of the Southern District, holding that DMI Trust and DMI S.A. did nothing more than, at most, providing routine banking services to persons later deemed to be suspected of connections to terrorism, and thus that the plaintiffs had failed to state a claim against DMI Trust or to establish jurisdiction over DMI S.A.

Dismissal at district court

I was unable to find the first dismissal on the Southern District web site. Google was unable to find any mention of "Dar" or "Maal" there. I did find the ruling elsewhere. Here is the entirety of the ruling as regards DMI:

Defendant Dar Al?Maal?Al?Islami Trust ("DMI Trust") is alleged to be part of a network of financial institutions that provide money laundering, and financial and banking services on behalf of al Qaeda. Plaintiffs allege that DMI Trust knowingly maintained accounts for al Qaeda front charities, including AHIF thereby facilitating the funding of al Qaeda. Defendant is also alleged to have actively sponsored al Qaeda through the actions undertaken by its purported subsidiaries. Mere allegations that defendant provided routine banking services, and of wrongful conduct committed by independent subsidiaries, are insufficient to subject DMI Trust to liability in this litigation. Its motions to dismiss are, therefore, granted.

This sounds like the plaintiffs failed to show that the subsidiaries were acting under direction from above or that the directors of DMI were part of the same conspiracy. The judge was George B. Daniels and the case In Re Terrorist Attacks.

Appeals court ruling

The appeals court ruling is available and it is an interesting read that explains the difficulties in applying tort laws to those who support terrorists. The judges in the appeals decision were Jose Cabrenes, Reena Raggi, and Jed Rakoff. Cabrenes is also a FISA court judge, and Rakoff is a district court judge from the Southern District of New York sitting by designation.

• In dismissing O'Neill's claim under the Alien Tort Statute, 28 USC § 1350 which covers any "violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States", the court finds that "plaintiffs’ ATS claims are without merit because no universal norm against 'terrorism' existed under customary international law". In other words, the court ruled that 9/11 was not a war crime.
• In forbidding torts of aiding and abetting, the court cited Rothstein v. UBS AB, a decision by Jed Rakoff and upheld by Amalya Kearse, which held that UBS bank had no civil liability for violating sanctions against Iran. This appears to be well supported by the lack of the plaintiffs' showing proximate cause, by the federal aiding-and-abetting statute 18 USC §2 referring specifically to crimes against the United States and not to civil torts, and by a Supreme Court finding in Central Bank of Denver v. First Interstate Bank of Denver that "Congress has not enacted a general civil aiding and abetting statute․."
• O'Neill's claim of extrajudicial killings under the Torture Victims Prevention Act was rejected on finding that the TVPA was written to apply to "individuals" meaning natural persons and not corporations. This is also well supported.