'Never forget': US marks more than two decades since 9/11 terrorist attacks

euronews.com:

Two decades and one year after the deadliest terror attack on US soil, the country remembered 9/11 with tear-choked tributes and pleas to “never forget".

Bonita Mentis set out to read victims' names at the Ground Zero ceremony wearing a necklace with a photo of her slain sister, Shevonne, a 25-year-old Guyanese immigrant who worked for a financial firm.

“It’s been 21 years, but it’s not 21 years for us. It seems like just yesterday," Mentis said on Sunday. "The wounds are still fresh.”

“No matter how many years have passed, nobody can actually comprehend that what happened that very day,” she added.

Victims’ relatives and dignitaries also convened at the other two attack sites, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed before reaching its intended target.

More than two decades later, 11 September remains a point for reflection on the hijacked-plane attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, reconfigured national security policy and spurred a US “war on terror” worldwide. 

Sunday's observances, which follow a fraught milestone anniversary last year, come little more than a month after a US drone strike killed a key al-Qaida figure who helped plot the 9/11 attacks, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Pierre Roldan, who lost his cousin Carlos Lillo, a paramedic, said “we had some form of justice” when a US raid killed Osama bin Laden in 2011.

“Now that Al-Zawahiri is gone, at least we’re continuing to get that justice,” Roldan said.

The 9/11 attacks also stirred — for a time — a sense of national pride and unity for many while subjecting Muslim Americans to years of suspicion and bigotry and engendering debate over the balance between safety and civil liberties. 

In ways both subtle and plain, the aftermath of 11