'Morally indefensible': Jemima Goldsmith berates US after Joe Biden keeps half of Afghanistan's assets in US

• Joe Biden decides to keep half of $7bn Afghanistan's assets in US.
• Jemima Goldsmith says move is "morally indefensible".
• "Not a single Afghan was involved in 9/11," she says.

British screenwriter Jemima Goldsmith has lashed out at the United States government after it decided to keep half of $7 billion Afghan assets in the country and hand over the rest to the Afghans in need.

US President Joe Biden on Friday signed an executive order to deal with the threat of an economic collapse in Afghanistan, setting wheels in motion for a complex resolution of competing interests in the country's assets.

The United States is seeking to free up half of the $7 billion in frozen Afghan central bank assets on US soil to help the Afghan people while holding the rest to possibly satisfy terrorism-related lawsuits against the Taliban, the White House said.

The multi-step plan calls for the other half of the funds to remain in the United States, subject to ongoing litigation by US victims of terrorism, including relatives of those who died in the September 11, 2001, hijacking attacks, the officials said.

Senior US administration officials said they would work to ensure access to $3.5 billion of the assets — which stem mainly from aid to Afghanistan over the past two decades — to benefit the Afghan people.

Read more: Biden plans to free half of $7bn frozen Afghan funds for aid, remainder to stay in US

They said Washington would set up a third-party trust to administer the funds for which details were still being worked out.

But Goldsmith disagreed with the move and called it "morally indefensible" as no Afghan citizen was involved in the 9/11 attacks.

"This is morally indefensible when Afghan mothers are selling their organs to save their children from starvation," she said in a tweet.

"Not a single Afghan was involved in 9/11. The average Afghan wasn’t even alive when that atrocity happened," said Goldsmith, who is Prime Minister Imran Khan's ex-wife.

Washington froze the Afghan funds after the Taliban's military takeover but has faced pressure to find a way to release the money without recognising the new administration, which says it is theirs.

Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban’s designated representative to the UN, called for the entire amount to be unfrozen and kept under control of the Afghan central bank.

"The reserve is the property of Da Afghanistan Bank and by extension, the property of the people of Afghanistan," Shaheen told Reuters.

The spokesman of the Taliban’s Doha office blasted the US move in a tweet: "Stealing and takeover of frozen money which belongs to the Afghan people by US shows the lowest level of human and moral decline of a country."

— Additional input from Reuters