by Larry Neumeis­ter
Asso­ci­ated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — The Saudi Bin­ladin Group is not liable for the Sept. 11 attacks, attor­neys for the multi­na­tional engi­neer­ing firm claim, because it made Osama bin Laden sur­ren­der his stake in the com­pany 14 years ago.

Respond­ing in fed­eral court to law­suits over the attacks, the lawyers wrote that in 1993, the ter­ror­ist mas­ter­mind was forced out as a share­holder in two com­pa­nies his fam­ily owns.

The com­pany filed the defense papers late Fri­day in U.S. Dis­trict Court in answer to claims brought by rep­re­sen­ta­tives, sur­vivors and insur­ance car­ri­ers of the vic­tims. The plain­tiffs, who seek bil­lions of dol­lars in dam­ages, allege the Saudi Bin­ladin Group, along with numer­ous banks, char­i­ties and indi­vid­u­als world­wide, pro­vided mate­r­ial sup­port and assis­tance to al-Qaida prior to the attacks.

The plain­tiffs con­tend Bakr bin Laden — Osama bin Laden’s brother, the senior mem­ber of the bin Laden fam­ily and chair­man of Saudi Bin­ladin Group — was one of al-Qaida’s prin­ci­pal financiers.

A judge in July had ordered Saudi Bin­ladin Group to pro­vide addi­tional infor­ma­tion about where the money for Osama bin Laden’s 2 per­cent stake in the com­pany went.

In the Fri­day fil­ing, lawyers for Saudi Bin­ladin Group said Bakr Bin­ladin pub­licly renounced Osama bin Laden in a state­ment released to the media in Feb­ru­ary 1994. Two months later, the Saudi gov­ern­ment revoked Osama bin Laden’s cit­i­zen­ship and froze his assets, the lawyers noted.

These actions, they said, occurred well before the United States first placed Osama bin Laden on its list of des­ig­nated ter­ror­ist indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions on Aug. 20, 1998.

Osama bin Laden has more than 50 sib­lings who share in the for­tune amassed after Osama’s father, Mohammed Bin­ladin, built his con­struc­tion empire, ele­vat­ing his fam­ily to among the wealth­i­est in Saudi Ara­bia. The al-Qaida founder’s finan­cial worth has remained in dispute.

Accord­ing to the court papers, Saudi Bin­ladin Group was cre­ated as the sur­viv­ing entity of Mohammed Binladin’s con­struc­tion com­pany, which was formed in the 1930s. Moham­mad Bin­ladin died in 1967, and own­er­ship of his com­pa­nies was passed along to his children.

The lawyers said the Saudi Bin­ladin Group had helped the United States, build­ing the King Abdul Aziz Air Base, from which U.S. forces oper­ated dur­ing the first Gulf War.

The Sept. 11 com­mis­sion con­cluded that the Sudanese gov­ern­ment took Osama bin Laden’s assets when he left the Sudan in 1996.

“He left Sudan with prac­ti­cally noth­ing,” the com­mis­sion con­cluded. “When bin Laden arrived in Afghanistan, he relied on the Tal­iban until he was able to rein­vig­o­rate his fundrais­ing efforts by draw­ing on ties to wealthy Saudi indi­vid­u­als that he had estab­lished dur­ing the Afghan war in the 1980s.”

Lawyers for the bin Laden fam­ily com­pa­nies have said Osama bin Laden never received any buy­out pay­ment. They said the com­pa­nies con­sulted with Saudi author­i­ties, who directed that the money be placed in trust out­side Osama bin Laden’s control.

A mes­sage left Mon­day with a lawyer for the plain­tiffs was not imme­di­ately returned.