Judge Finds Link Between Iraq and 9/11 Attacks Wed May 7, 3:24 PM ET
By Gail Appleson

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. judge said on Wednesday that families of two victims killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America were able to show a tenuous link between Iraq (news - web sites) and Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) in the deadly strikes and awarded the plaintiffs more than $100 million in damages.

The decision was the first time a federal judge ruled on Iraq's role on the hijacked airliner attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon (news - web sites), a lawyer in the case said. Although the U.S. government suspects Iraq supported the strikes it has accused bin Laden of orchestrating, it has not been able to prove a connection.

U.S. District Judge Harold Baer ordered that a group of defendants including bin Laden, his al Qaeda network, the Taliban, Afghanistan (news - web sites), Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) and the Republic of Iraq pay the families for pain, suffering and economic losses.

'I conclude that plaintiffs have shown, albeit barely ... that Iraq provided material support to bin Laden and al Qaeda,' Baer wrote adding that a substantial portion of the evidence was hearsay.

'My decision reflects no more than that the facts and the available inferences meet the plaintiff's burden of proof.'

Two witnesses testified they believed that Iraq had a role in the attacks, including former CIA (news - web sites) Director R. James Woolsey, who headed the spy agency from February 1993 to January 1995, and Laurie Mylorie, an expert on Iraq and terrorism.

Woolsey said non-Iraqi fundamentalists were trained in airplane hijacking and other forms of terrorism in Iraq and he cited an alleged April 2001 meeting between one of the attack's masterminds and an Iraqi intelligence agent.

The judge said the plaintiffs also relied on a regional Iraqi newspaper report in July 2001 that said bin Laden would try to bomb the Pentagon after he bombed the White House.

James Beasley Jr., a Philadelphia lawyer representing plaintiffs, said they may get some money because of the defendants' assets frozen in the United States and overseas.

One of the cases was brought by the widow of Timothy Soulas, a senior managing director and partner at Cantor Fitzgerald Securities, who died in the World Trade Center attack. He was married with five children and his wife was pregnant.

The other case was brought by family members of George Smith, a senior business analyst at a World Trade Center firm.

Baer previously issued an unusual ruling that families of the victims could serve bin Laden formal notice of the lawsuits through media outlets including Qatar's al-Jazeera television and Afghan newspapers.

Defendants usually receive notice of a complaint by letter or personal delivery. Without proper service, Baer would have lacked jurisdiction over bin Laden, blamed by the United States for the attacks that killed about 3,000 people.