29-05-2025
NAS PENSACOLA TERRORISM VICTIMS WILL ARGUE THE APPEAL OF THEIR LAWSUIT AGAINST THE KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA ON JUNE 3, 2025
JACKSONVILLE, Fla., May 29, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The Law Offices of Jeffrey E. McFadden, LLC wish to announce that on the morning of June 3, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit will hear oral argument on the appeal of the lawsuit victims and their families filed against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia after a Royal Saudi Air Force ('RSAF') officer went on a shooting rampage at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida on December 6, 2019. The argument will take place in the Gerald B. Tjoflat Courtroom (13th Floor) of the United States Courthouse located at 300 North Hogan Street, Jacksonville, Florida.
The date of the shooting coincided two years to the day of President Trump's announcement on December 6, 2017, declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel, and marked the first time since the attacks of September 11, 2001 that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula had been involved in a terrorist attack on U.S. soil. The shooter, Mohammed Saeed Al-Shamrani, a Second Lieutenant in the RSAF, murdered three U.S. Servicemembers and severely injured four U.S. Navy servicemembers; a Navy civil servant; seven Escambia County Sherrif's deputies; and a member of the Department of Defense Police Force. Al-Shamrani was at NAS Pensacola for flight training under a Security Cooperation Education & Training Program administered under U.S. foreign military sales to Saudi Arabia. In the wake of the shootings, the U.S. Department of Justice declared the incident to be an act of international terrorism.
All of the victims, and in the cases of those killed, their families, filed a civil complaint against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on February 22, 2021, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida in Pensacola, pleading 19 causes of action, all of which seek to hold the Kingdom civilly liable for the acts of its military officer. In extended motions practice, the Kingdom sought to dismiss the suit on grounds of immunity under the U.S. Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act ('FSIA'). On March 30, 2024, the U.S. District Court granted the Kingdom's motion, and the victims and their families timely filed an appeal with the Eleventh Circuit.
In addition to raising important questions about a foreign sovereign's civil liability for an act of international terrorism in U.S. soil, the appeal raises a number of questions of first impression regarding the Foreign Sovereign Immunicites Act – including the meaning of certain provisions of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act of 2016, which neither the U.S. Supreme Court nor any federal court of appeals has previously interpreted.
The case is captioned Benjamin Watson, Jr., et al. v. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, No. 24-11310 (11th Cir.).
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SOURCE Law Offices of Jeffrey E. McFadden, LLC
