http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20020815-070157-7080r.

htm
August 15, 2002
WTC victims sue Sept. 11 financiers

WASHINGTON, Aug. 15 (UPI) -- The relatives of the Sept. 11 terror attacks filed a lawsuit in
Washington Thursday against the banks, charities and individual financiers who allegedly bankrolled the
strikes. "It's up to us to bankrupt the terrorists and those who finance them so they will never again
have the resources to commit such atrocities against the American people as we experienced on Sept.
11," said Deena Burnett, whose husband Tom was killed in Flight 93 in Pennsylvania. Tom Burnett's
father, Thomas E. Burnett Sr., was lead plaintiff in the case Burnett vs. al Baraka Investment and Dev.
Corp. that includes some 600 victims' family members and rescue workers. The case was filed in U.S.
District Court for the District of Columbia. The list of more than 80 defendants included: Osama bin
Laden; seven banks; Islamic charitable foundations; the Saudi bin Laden Group, also known as bin
Laden Corp.; and three Saudi princes. The government of Sudan was also named in the lawsuit for
allegedly bankrolling the al Qaida network, Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. "Sudan is designated
as a terrorist state by the U.S. government, therefore, it is not immune from prosecution and liability,"
Anne Kearse, an attorney with Ness Motley based in Charleston, S.C., told United Press International.
"Saudi Arabia is not listed as a terrorist state, therefore, it was not included in the lawsuit, however,
but there may be other avenues that may still be raised with that country." Bin laden's family in Saudi
Arabia has denied having any part in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and have said they have "disowned"
bin Laden, who has been stripped of Saudi citizenship by the Saudi government. "Although they
allege they have nothing to do with their brother, we believe a case can be made against some bin
Laden family members that make them culpable," Kearse said.
The 258-page complaint stated that it is in the tradition of a civilized nation to allow redress for wrongs
through an appeal of law and justice.
According to the plaintiffs' lead attorney Ron Motley, the monetary damages being sought could reach
$1 trillion dollars but at least hundreds of billions of dollars -- largely from assets held by the defendants
in the United States.
"Although there is a tremendous amount of assets including investments and property by the
defendants in the United States, through international treaties we can also attach assets in other
countries," Kearse said. "We expect the lawsuit will take four to six years but we are in it for the long
haul."
The complaint said that the group in power in Saudi Arabia "blocks avenues of change, represses
advocates of change and promotes of culture of violence -- and the culture of violence is the prime
enable of violence."
Saudi Arabia's sect of Islam, Wahabbism, "purports to loathe modernity, capitalism, human rights,
religious freedom and an open society -- and yet those in power live an extravagant, decadent lifestyle as
they profess austerity and practice oppression, yet, ironically, the defendants are the facilitators of terror
who use our system while trying to destroy it," the complaint said.
Ness Motley represented thousands of victims of asbestos exposure nationwide and in Canada and
more recently, the firm has been involved in litigation against the tobacco industry and represented
numerous states in their pursuit to recover Medicaid funds paid for tobacco-related diseases.

Almost half of WTC victims identified July 13, 2002 Posted: 6:08 PM EDT (2208 GMT)
http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/07/13/wtc.identification/?related (Download 02-18-03)

NEW YORK (CNN) -- New York's medical examiner predicted Saturday his office will ultimately
identify 2,000 of the 2,823 people who died in the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
So far, the medical examiner's office has identified 1,229 victims, or 44 percent of the total number of
people listed as dead. Initially, authorities predicted they would not be able to identify more than half of
those killed. "I'll be very disappointed if we don't identify 2,000 people by the end of the year," said Dr.
Charles Hirsch, the city's medical examiner. That number would represent 71 percent of the total
fatalities. But Hirsch acknowledged that the figure is an estimate. "It's what our gut tells us, based on
emerging technology and what samples we have to work with," he said. However, since the decay of
tissue accelerates with time and high temperatures, authorities are unlikely to be able to identify all of the
victims, Hirsch said. "Some people just don't exist anymore, due to the high heat and passage of time,"
he said. Authorities collected 19,700 tissue samples from World Trade Center rubble at the Fresh Kills
landfill on Staten Island during the World Trade Center cleanup. The samples were taken to the medical
examiner's office.

Landfill closes Monday

The effort has resulted in

more than simple
identifications. "I think we
learned a lot -- some
things to do and some
things not to do," Hirsch
said. "We hope our
experience will make it
easier for other examiners
for future disasters.' The
biggest lesson: the value
of planning. "We put in
place the thinking and a
lot of the infrastructure
before it occurred," he
said. Though he and his
staff are now working
normal business hours,
that was not the case last
fall. "At first there was no
clock and no calendar."
They have not had to
shoulder the load alone. A
federal response team of
volunteers -- including
medical examiners --
pitched in from around the
country immediately
afterward and stayed on
until the end of June. Five
hundred of the
identifications have been
made using solely DNA
technology. Most of the
other identifications have
been made using
standard technology,
including dental X-rays,
fingerprints and personal
belongings. The
identification process has
required more than
scientific expertise, he
said. Throughout the
painstaking effort, he and
members of his staff have
worked closely with family
groups, seeking their
suggestions and probing
them for details of the
victims' bodies that might
help in making
identifications, such as
scars, tattoos, implants.
Any further identifications
will all be made using
DNA technology, he said.
During the procedure,
DNA from tissues culled
from the rubble is
compared with DNA taken
from hair and
toothbrushes brought in
by family members of the
victims.

Families support quest

for identification

The desire for the

identifications among
victims' family members is
strong. Only about two
dozen families chose not
to respond to requests for
such material, he said.
Hirsch's team has also
employed two new
methods of identification.
One uses mitochondrial
DNA, which is inherited
from the mother only. Any
maternally related person
may provide a sample for
comparison with a
biological sample. In the
first use of the technology
in a large-scale disaster,
thousands of biological
samples have been sent
to Celera Genomics
Group, a private
laboratory with offices in
Bethesda, Maryland, and
San Francisco, California,
Hirsch said. Another new
technique is called SNIP.
Short for single nucleotide
polymorphism, SNIP does
not require the long
strands of DNA required
by standard analytic
procedures. Instead, even
tiny bits of tissue
degraded by time and
heat may still yield the
identities of their owners,
he said. Though the
procedure remains
experimental, Hirsch said
he hopes the technology
will enter the realm of
accepted practice within a
few months. "If we can
validate this, it will be the
first time used for forensic
analysis."
With nearly 20,000 tissue
samples in storage and
advances in technology
continuing to expand the
limits of what is possible,
Hirsch predicted his job
may never be completed.