Navy personnel and households, some affected by decades-old terrorist assaults, say Congress ought to open up a pool of confiscated Taliban funds to compensate victims of terrorism and never simply these affected by the 9/11 assaults.

The request got here in a letter to the management of the Senate Armed Providers Committee in each the Home and Senate, the Military Instances reported Tuesday. The letter is the newest in what might be ongoing wrangling over easy methods to distribute $3.5 billion in Afghan funds frozen by the U.S.

President Joe Biden in February signed an govt order freezing $7 billion in property of Afghanistan's central financial institution situated within the U.S. The order was supposed to stop the cash from falling into the palms of the Taliban, a radical Islamic group who seized management of the nation final 12 months.

Khobar Towers Explosion
Navy personnel and households urge Congress to open a pool of confiscated Taliban funds to compensate terror victims apart from these of the 9/11 assaults. Above, U.S. and Saudi army personnel survey injury to Khobar Towers attributable to the explosion of a gasoline truck in 1996. Getty employees/Getty Photographs

The White Home famous on the time that $3.5 billion of the property are topic to ongoing litigation from U.S. victims of terrorism, together with kinfolk of victims of the 9/11 assaults.

However the letter argued that the cash needs to be positioned into the U.S. Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund (USVSSTF), which was arrange in 2015 to compensate victims who've introduced profitable authorized actions in opposition to governments concerned in terrorism.

"[The February executive order] ignores the sacrifices made by the U.S. army serving our nation overseas and ignores the basic premise underneath which the USVSST[F] was established," the group wrote, in keeping with the Instances. "The fund was created by Congress to deal with the truthful and equitable distribution of funds for the good thing about all U.S. terrorism victims, reasonably than a choose group."

The letter was signed by relations and veterans of terrorist assaults predating 9/11, in keeping with the Instances. These assaults embody the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, the 1983 bombing of U.S. Marines barracks in Lebanon, North Korea's 1968 seize of the usPueblo and others.

The 9/11 catastrophe left greater than 3,000 individuals killed within the worst terrorist assault on U.S. soil. The assault triggered America's 2001 invasion of Afghanistan to oust the Taliban authorities for harboring Al-Qaeda, the group that masterminded 9/11.

Since then, households of 9/11 victims have gone to courtroom in search of compensation in opposition to governments and different entities believed to share some duty for the assault.

The White Home stated in February that 9/11 victims will "have a full alternative to have their claims heard in courtroom," and that half of the $7 billion seized from Afghanistan's central financial institution will probably be used to learn the Afghan individuals.

Nonetheless, 9/11 sufferer relations have expressed concern that the White Home's transfer would go away them preventing for compensation. Reduction teams in addition to the Taliban have additionally criticized the White Home's transfer to freeze the $3.5 billion.

Newsweek has reached out to the Home and Senate chairs of the Armed Providers Committee for remark.