Judge dismisses lawsuit against Saudi Arabia over 2019 Navy station attack

PENSACOLA, Fla. — A Florida judge has dismissed a lawsuit against Saudi Arabia over the 2019 mass shooting at the Pensacola Naval Air Station that left three U.S. service members dead and several others injured.

U.S. District Judge M. Casey Rodgers ruled last month that Saudi Arabia is protected from the lawsuit under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which limits legal actions against foreign governments. The plaintiffs, relatives of the dead and injured, plan an appeal.

Cameron Walters, Joshua Watson and Mohammed Haitham, all Navy soldiers, were shot dead during the December 6, 2019 attack. The gunman, Mohammad Saeed Al-Shamrani, was shot and killed by responding officers.

Al-Shamrani was a Saudi Air Force officer who trained at the Pensacola base. The FBI said he also had ties to the extremist group Al-Qaeda and had been in contact with it before the shooting.

The lawsuit alleged that Saudi Arabia bore responsibility for the shooting because the kingdom allegedly tolerated Al-Shamrani’s jihadist radicalization. Rodgers decided it wasn’t enough to allow the lawsuit to proceed.

“In short, the court’s role is limited by Congress’s jurisdictional dictates to protect the sovereignty of a foreign state, despite the severity of this tragic and horrific terrorist attack,” the judge wrote.

Prosecutors had argued that Al-Shamrani. as a member of the Saudi Air Force, acted within the scope of his employment “because his work provided him access to the site of the attack, and he believed that he was serving the interests of Saudi Arabia due to his state-indoctrinated extremist religious beliefs. “

Judge Rodgers instead ruled that Al-Shamrani’s actions “did not fall within the scope of his work because they were committed for his own personal religious extremist purposes.”