9/11 victim family members ask Saudi officials for a meeting post LIV-PGA merger

The families of 9/11 victims are requesting a meeting with the leadership of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund following the announced merger of the PGA Tour and Saudi-funded LIV Golf.

In a letter provided to POLITICO, more than 300 spouses and children of 9/11 victims asked for the in-person gathering with Yasir bin Othman Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Saudi Public Investment Fund. Al-Rumayyan will serve as the chairman of the entity resulting in the LIV-PGA merger.

The effort marks the first time that a coalition of families of 9/11 victims has publicly requested a face-to-face meeting with the Public Investment Fund, at least since the launch of LIV Golf. It also culminates a prolonged effort by the families to protest the Saudi-backed golf tour, citing allegations of the Saudi government’s role in the Sept. 11 attacks.

In the letter, the families ask that the Kingdom “take responsibility for [its] participatory role in the 9/11 attacks.”

“After 22 years, the 9/11 widows and children simply want a resolution and a modicum of peace in our lives,” the letter reads. “To us, if the Kingdom truly intends to rebrand their image and normalize its relations with the world, the first thing that they should be willing to do is meaningfully address the grievances of the 9/11 widows and children.”

The surviving family members said in their letter that the meeting could be confidential, off-the-record, and without lawyers or minders.

In an interview, Kristen Breitweiser, an activist whose husband was killed in the Sept. 11 attacks, argued that the PGA tour used those advocating against LIV Golf in an effort to leverage a better business deal for themselves.

“Publicly and I guess privately, the PGA had indicated that they were a principled organization that stood with the 9/11 families and stood against Saudi trying to normalize its relationship with the rest of the world without coming to terms and taking responsibility for its past role in underwriting terrorism, including the 9/11 attacks,” she said.

Breitweiser maintained that the families had long been a “political football” and that the PGA-LIV deal was just “one betrayal in a long line of betrayals that the 9/11 families have faced.”

The PIF did not return a request for comment. A PGA spokesperson declined to provide a comment.

Mary Geraghty, whose husband Edward was a deputy chief in the FDNY on 9/11, told POLITICO that she was “blindsided” by the merger announcement earlier this week.

She said in an interview that the request for a sit down stemmed from the slow pace of the families’ efforts to seek justice as well as Saudi Arabia’s efforts to rehab its image.

“You just want to look people in the eye, you just want them to look you in the eye and say, ‘Just take some accountability,’” she said.

“To just ignore it, and to try to just take a role in our world as though … the atrocities that they've been part of never took place is such a slap in the face to thousands and thousands of family members,” she said. “So if he's willing to sit down and talk to us, boy, do I welcome that.”