A group of relatives of victims and political representatives commemorated today the 30th anniversary of the first attack against the New York World Trade Centerperpetrated by a cell of Islamists, and considered by the FBI as the “dress rehearsal” of the attacks of September 11, 2001 against the Twin Towers.
Next to one of the fountains erected in memory of the victims of the 2 attacks that occurred in 1993 and 2001, in the economic district of Wall Streetin Manhattan, a policeman began the ceremony by ringing a bell at 12:18, the same time that, 3 decades ago today, the explosion of a vehicle loaded with explosives took place.
“On February 26, 1993, a group of terrorists with an ideology similar to that of Al Qaedabut who were not from Al Qaeda, launched an attack on the Twin Towers from the underground parking lot of the north tower” in which 6 people died and about a thousand were injured, he explains to EFE Gaby Sarmientoa worker at the Museum dedicated to 9/11 and who sinks at the foot of the skyscrapers on Wall Street.
Next to a plate that marks the approximate place where the terrorists located the truck loaded with 550 kilograms of explosives, in the old B2 parking lot of the north tower, Sarmiento explains that the plan of the group, self-styled Liberation Army-Fifth Battalionwas to burst the foundations of the skyscraper with the intention that it would collapse on the south tower causing the fall of both symbols of economic progress in the United States and therefore of Western capitalism.
The 9/11 dress rehearsal
The explosion created a crater almost 30 meters deep, but missed its target. For the FBI: “terrorism of middle East it had arrived on American soil” and had done so “with a bang”.
A few days after the attack (on March 4) the first suspect was arrested, Mohammad Salameh, who had returned several times to the agency where he had rented the van with which they carried out the attack to demand payment of the deposit.
Later, the rest of those involved fell, all condemned to life imprisonmentwith the exception of what is considered its ringleader, the Pakistani Ramzi Yousefwho flew the same night of the attack to Pakistanwhere he was captured in 1995, after a former collaborator ratted him out in exchange for the bounty on him.
After being extradited to the United States, Yousef, nephew of the alleged “mastermind” of the 9/11 attacks, Jalid Sheij MohamedHe was also tried and sentenced to life imprisonment.
For the FBI “the attack turned out to be a kind of deadly dress rehearsal for 9/11; And with the help of Yousef’s uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, al Qaeda would later turn Yousef’s nightmare into reality.”
The memory of the victims
Their names were engraved on a small fountain erected roughly over the spot where the vehicle had been detonated. Five names of men and one of women, that of Monica Rodriguez Smith7 months pregnant and that the next day her maternity leave began.
But in the colossal destruction caused by the 9/11 terrorist attackTheir names are also lost, except for a piece recovered from the fountain that reads the name of one of the deceased John (DiGiovanni) and is on display at the 9/11 Museum.
Their names and faces can be seen alongside the photographs and names of those who lost their lives 8 years later. And they can also be read in one of the 2 square fountains that sink into the ground like a shadow where the now-sunk imposing skyscrapers used to rise and that house the names of all the victims of the 2 attacks.
The 9/11 Museum also reserves a room for the 1993 attack located at the end of its journey through the nightmare of 9/11, where recordings of desperate victims are mixed moments before dying, personal belongings found among the ruins or remains of the buildings and planes that hit the towers.
They cannot be photographed, but they are there: the piece of the fountain, a piece of the wall of the B2 car park in the north tower, the computer of one of the members of the terrorist cell, the envelope they sent to the newspaper The New York Times to claim the attack or pieces of the van that hid the attacks.
Sarmiento, who confesses the hardship that sometimes working in this museum supposes, assures that after what happened in 1993 the stairs were widened, the routes to the exits were marked with fluorescent paint and the doors were marked with the word “Exit”. ” (Exit), to facilitate evacuation: details, which, he explains, helped save lives in the 9/11 attacks.
Following today’s brief ceremony, which was led by the Governor of New York, Kathy Hochuland the mayor of the city, Eric Adamsseveral relatives of the victims recalled aloud the names of the deceased and painted roses on the plate where their names are carved.
With information and image from EFE
