A US appeals court has ruled that the survivors of the September 11, 2001 attacks and attacks on US embassies in East Africa cannot access $3.5 billion in frozen assets of the Central Bank of Afghanistan.
This is half of Afghanistan’s $7 billion in foreign exchange reserves that were frozen at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York after the fall of the previous government and the Islamic Emirate’s takeover in August 2021.
In February 2022, former US President Joe Biden issued an executive order allocating half of these assets to aid the people of Afghanistan and leaving the other half open for legal proceedings.
But the court’s recent decision also denied victims access to this portion of the assets.
The ruling is a major setback for the victims’ survivors, who had hoped to recover some of the assets through lawsuits against groups such as al-Qaeda, Reuters reported.
