By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org
A federal appeals court in Atlanta Monday reinstated a lawsuit that seeks to hold Saudi Arabia responsible for the deadly terrorist shooting six years ago at the Pensacola Naval Air Station by a pilot trainee in the Saudi Royal Air Force.
The three-judge panel unanimously held that claims of gross negligence against the Kingdom by relatives of three dead U.S. Navy servicemen and 13 others who were seriously wounded in the Dec. 6, 2019 attack are legitimate under one of the exceptions to foreign sovereign immunity created when Congress enacted the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) in 2016.
“These claims are facially sufficient because they are based on a series of acts of commission (rather than acts of omission) taken by the Kingdom in hiring and vetting [Airman Mohammad Saeed] Al-Shamrani that rose to the level of gross negligence under Florida law,” wrote Judge Stanley Marcus of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Joining in the opinion were Judges Jill Pryor and Britt Grant.
Further, the judges agreed that most of the plaintiffs’ other claims – including those based on the failure to monitor Al-Shamrani in the United States – were properly dismissed because the plaintiffs “had not been able to overcome the Kingdom’s sovereign immunity.”
The appeals court ordered the case returned to the Northern District of Florida and the courtroom of U.S. District Judge M. Casey Rodgers for further proceedings. Rodgers had dismissed the multi-million-dollar lawsuit, citing the principle of a foreign state’s sovereign immunity in April 2024.
The ruling represents the second serious legal blow to Saudi Arabia in less than three months. On Aug. 28, a federal judge in New York denied the oil-rich nation’s motion to dismiss the multi-billion-dollar civil case brought against it by the survivors and relatives of the nearly 3,000 men, women and children who were killed during the Sept. 11, 2001 al Qaeda terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
The court’s 71-page opinion recounts in detail the allegations in the plaintiff’s 172-page amended complaint, which says that Saudi Arabia “is the largest foreign military sales customer of the United States, having agreed to purchase at least $350 billion in military contracts over a number of years.” Much of those arms trade agreements include the obligation to train Saudi Arabian military personnel, including members of the Saudi Royal Air Force, on American military bases.
Under the U.S. Department of Defense’s Security Cooperation Education and Training Program, foreign states are “required to follow policies and procedures designed to ensure the safety of the United States and its citizens,” the opinion says. That includes security screening before participants can obtain an “Invitational Travel Order and a visa to come to the United States,” the opinion says.
SAUDIS CLEARED GUNMAN TO ENTER U.S.
In addition to being a second lieutenant in the Saudi air force, Shamrani was “a member of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP),” the opinion says. The same year he joined the military, 2015, Shamrani “allegedly was following religious extremist and hardline clerics on Twitter” and also “allegedly contacted operatives from AQAP by this time.”
“Despite his radicalization and the expression of many anti-American views, he was allowed to enroll in the RSAF [Royal Saudi Air Force] Academy, the opinion says citing the amended complaint. Shamrani regularly posted radical fundamentalist, anti-American and anti-Jewish screeds, echoing the violent teachings of Anwar al-Awlaki. Awlaki was a Yemeni-American cleric and apparent member of AQAP who was killed by an American drone strike in Yemen in 2011.
“Despite the repeated public expression of extremist and violent views,” the opinion states, Al-Shamrani was awarded a scholarship to enter a joint military program in the U.S. “In May 2017, Saudi Arabia allegedly represented to the United States that Al-Shamrani had cleared the requisite security, medical and internal character vetting,” the opinion says, citing the amended complaint.
In May 2018, Al-Shamrani was assigned to Pensacola NAS to begin flight training. In July 2019, he “allegedly sought and obtained a Florida state hunting license, which he used to purchase a Glock 45 9-millimeter pistol and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. These purchases violated the Kingdom’s policies and procedures, which forbade international military students from owning firearms. Nevertheless, Al-Shamrani stored the pistol and ammunition in the RSAF officer barracks at NAS Pensacola.”
The opinion goes on to say that on Sept. 11, 2019, the 18th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Shamrani posted a message on Twitter: “The countdown has begun.” Later that month he wrote out a will on his phone in which he explained his upcoming attack and sent the will to AQAP.
On the morning of his rampage, Shamrani tweeted several messages. The opinion reproduced them, with typos. “I’m not against you for just being American. I don’t hate you because of your freedoms, I hate you because every day you [are] supporting, funding and committing crimes not only against Muslims but also humanity. I am against evil, an[d] America as a whole has turned into a nation of evil. What I see from America is the supporting of Israel which is invasion of Muslim countries, I see invasion of many countries by its troops, I see Guantanamo Bay. I see cruise missiles, cluster bombs and UAV.
“Your decision-makers, the politicians, the lobbyists and the major corporations are the ones gaining from your foreign policy, and you are the ones paying the price for it…the security is shared destiny. You will not be safe until we live it as reality in [Palestine], and American troops get out of our lands.”
At 6:42 a.m. Shamrani, dressed in his RSAF uniform, entered Building 633 at Pensacola NAS base and started shooting. The amended complaint says he went from room to room “firing hundreds of rounds of ammunition from his Glock pistol at personnel throughout the building,” according to the opinion.
Shot dead were Navy servicemen Joshua Kaleb Watson, Cameron Scott Walters and Mohammed Sameh Haitham. Five other Naval personnel, a Defense Department captain and seven Escambia County Sheriff’s deputies were wound.
Shamrani was killed by law enforcement during a shootout.
An FBI investigation later found that “17 other Saudi trainees had social media accounts linked to anti-American or jihadi content, and that in total, 21 other Saudi trainees possessed ‘derogatory material’ in violation of U.S. and Saudi military law. As a result, these 21 trainees were terminated from the program and sent back to Saudi Arabia within days of the attack,” the opinion said, referring to the amended complaint.
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