With presidential candidates looking on, some 9/11 victims’ relatives appealed to them Wednesday for accountability as the US marked an anniversary laced with election-season politics.
The image was one of putting politics aside at another solemn commemoration of the hijacked-plane attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept 11, 2001. For years, politicians have been only observers at ground zero commemorations, the microphones going instead to relatives who read victims’ names aloud.
Some of those readers took the occasion Wednesday to deliver political messages of their own.
We are pleading for your help, but you ignore us, Allison Walsh-DiMarzio said, directly challenging Trump and Harris to press Saudi Arabia about any Saudi official involvement in the attacks. Most of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, but the kingdom denies involvement by senior Saudi officials.
Which one of you will have the courage to be our hero? We deserve better, Walsh-DiMarzio said. She’s a daughter of 9/11 victim Barbara P Walsh, an administrative assistant.
Joanne Barbara was one of multiple readers who spoke out against a now-revoked plea deal that military prosecutors struck with alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two fellow defendants.
It has been 23 years, and the families deserve justice and accountability, said the widow of Assistant Fire Chief Gerard A Barbara.
Biden, on his last Sept 11 in office, and Harris were set to pay respects Wednesday at all three 9/11 attack sites: ground zero, the Pentagon and a rural part of Pennsylvania.
The president, vice president and, separately, Trump laid wreaths Wednesday afternoonat the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Biden and Harris spoke with victims’ relatives and visited the local fire department; Trump and Vance went to a New York City firehouse earlier in the day.
