A 9/11 widow interrupted Friday's annual reading of victims' names at ground zero in New York City to accuse Saudi Arabia of complicity in the al Qaeda terror attacks that claimed thousands of innocent lives.
After announcing the name of her late husband, Tom Strada, Terry Strada said: “You are missed more with each year that passes.”
Strada, the national chair of 9/11 Families United, then sparked applause by saying it had been “25 years, and still we have no justice” for the alleged role Saudi Arabia played in the attacks on September 11, 2001.
She accused the kingdom of having “fomented a rancid culture of anti-American terrorism around the globe” and of having “sent its agents to support the radical Islamic hijackers” who flew passenger planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. The attacks killed 2,753 people, including hundreds of heroic first responders.
Strada then turned her ire on unidentified U.S. government officials.
“But for 25 years, administration after administration — including leaders in front of us here today — chose to protect the Saudis instead of standing with the 9/11 families,” she said. “ It has been one betrayal after another.”
Strada said President Donald Trump — who reportedly skipped the ceremony in part because he wouldn’t be allowed to give a speech — “can still change that,” and she called on him to do so.
“Tell them that if they want to be friends with the USA, they cannot continue to deny all of this, all of the pain, all of the destruction that we have all been suffering through,” she said.
Strada also asked Vice President JD Vance, who was in the audience, to “carry that message back” to the White House.
“Stand with the families. Stand with the survivors. Stand with Americans,” she said. “As my husband Tom would have said, that is always the right thing to do.”
Tom Strada, 41, was a senior vice president for the Cantor Fitzgerald financial services company and investment bank, which had its corporate headquarters on the 101st through 105th floors of the World Trade Center's north tower, above where American Airlines Flight 111 smashed into the building at 8:46 a.m. in the first 9/11 attack.
The Chatham, New Jersey, resident was raising three kids — including a baby — with Terry, who described him online as a “natural athlete, a gifted golfer and fisherman,” who also enjoyed betting on horse races at New Jersey's Meadowlands racetrack, leading his family to joke that it was his “second job.”
Cantor Fitzgerald lost 658 of its 960 New York employees, the most of any organization, along with 50 contractors and visitors, and 61 people working for Euro Brokers, which is now part of Cantor, according to the New York Post.
Shortly after Strada’s remarks, another participant in the ceremony — who identified himself as the nephew of 9/11 victim Lisa Marie Terry — used one of Trump’s catchphrases while calling on the president to let the public see any government records related to Saudi Arabia’s alleged involvement.
“For 25 years, the deep state has hidden the truth about what happened that day 25 years ago,” he said. “President Trump, you're our last hope. Release the unredacted files that implicate Saudi Arabia, while what's left of the victims' families are still alive to see it.”
A civil lawsuit over Saudi Arabia’s alleged involvement in the 9/11 terrorist hijackings — which also killed hundreds of people at the Pentagon and in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania — is heading for trial after a federal judge in New York City denied a motion to dismiss the case, ABC News reported last week.
Newly-revealed records include a video recording that allegedly shows a Saudi agent casing the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., as well as a sketch that allegedly shows calculations for navigating a plane toward a ground target, according to ABC News.
Fifteen of the 19 September 11 hijackers were Saudis, as was al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden. The 2004 report by the U.S. government’s 9/11 Commission said that “Saudi Arabia has long been considered the primary source of al Qaeda funding.”
But the commission also said it “found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization.”
The report’s only reference to anyone providing material support for al Qaeda is a footnote that references Abdelghani Meskini, an Algerian national who was arrested in December 1999 and agreed to cooperate in a probe of the failed plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport during the 2000 New Year celebration.
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