9/11 anniversary: Twenty years on, US and the world face a painful reflection of a life-changing moment
In the spot where the Twin Towers once stood, there is now a calmness – a peace in the heart of New York City.
The only sound is water, cascading endlessly into two vast square voids, one for each tower.
They are voids that will never be filled, representing holes for so many who mourn the loss of so many more.
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9/11: How the day unfolded
On the tip of Manhattan, the scene is set to reflect on nearly 3,000 lives lost and a moment that changed the world.
The ceremony will begin at 8.40am New York time (1.40pm UK) – six minutes before the first plane hit the north tower 20 years ago – on September 11 2001.
Former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama will join President Joe Biden for a ceremony punctuated by six stark moments of silence: three to mark the planes hitting the two towers and the Pentagon in Washington, two to mark the collapse of each tower, and one to mark the moment the fourth plane came down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
President George W Bush will be in Shanksville for the ceremony there, and President Donald Trump will mark the day with a series of as-yet-unpublished stops.
Over the coming hours, relatives and survivors will share their stories and reflect on their individual loss.
Flight crews will gather in uniform, pausing for their lost colleagues – their friends.
Firefighters, many too young to remember 9/11, will pay their respects to those who ran towards danger to rescue those trapped in the towers, including the first responders who lost their lives.
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‘We wondered if we were still alive’
Over two hours, the names of each of those to die that day will be read out, one by one.
Twenty years ago, President George W Bush was at Ground Zero, megaphone in hand, reflecting the mood of a nation consumed by a deep trauma and a bewilderment that demanded revenge.
“The people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon,” he declared.
Who would have thought that presidential vow all those years ago would be a central thread through three more American presidencies and define our collective history in the subsequent two decades.
Long conflicts in Afghanistan, then Iraq, followed. A “war on terror” waged. By definition, it required a victory that would always be elusive.
So many lives were lost in the past two decades.
The US was consumed by revenge but also wrapped up in a desire to change and remake the world according to its own image and to achieve that by force.
Increasingly it proved to be a futile and dangerous objective that brought out the worst in America. In trying to export its own values, the US was in fact repudiating them.
Key moments would be proved over time to have been mistakes causing irrevocable damage.
The missed opportunities such as the failure to capture bin Laden in the Afghan mountains in November 2001. He was to escape into Pakistan and evade capture for a decade.
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What is the legacy of 9/11?
Policy decisions such as diverting attention away from Afghanistan to Iraq in 2003 on the elusive hunt for weapons of mass destruction.
Then there was the CIA rendition flights, the torture, the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and of course Guantanamo.
Twenty years after 9/11, 40 prisoners remain at Guantanamo. Most have not been charged, none have yet faced trial. They include the 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
The latest inflection point in these past two decades has been Mr Biden’s chaotic retreat from Afghanistan. History is yet to judge the wisdom of that decision.
The legacy of 9/11 has been dramatic and it is enduring.
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9/11 British survivor: ‘It shifted my world’
Twenty years might have helped individuals to begin to heal, but collectively, for America and well beyond, two decades of conflict has stirred so much and healed almost nothing.
Professor Bruce Hoffman, senior fellow at the Council for Foreign Relations, told me this week: “I think the sad truth of the matter is that if bin Laden were alive today, he’d be a happy man.
“Firstly, the enterprise that he commenced over three decades ago has withstood what really is the technologically most advanced military in the history of mankind and survived. It has continually overcome whatever setbacks have been meted out to it. And now that we see with the victory of the Taliban, the Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan, which was always bin Laden’s kind of pet project, has once again been resurrected.”
He added: “But more to the point, according to the US State Department list of foreign terrorist organisations, there are now four times as many Salafi jihadi groups that adhere to bin Laden’s ideology today than there were on 9/11.”
For New York, for America and well beyond, this will be painful reflection of such an extraordinary moment.
Bodycam footage showing prison officers fatally beating an inmate has been released by New York’s attorney general.
Prison officers at Marcy Correctional Facility in New York punched and kicked 43-year-old Robert Brooks repeatedly while he was handcuffed on an infirmary bed.
He died in hospital on 10 December, a day after the attack.
The incident has drawn outrage from political leaders and was condemned by the prison officers’ union as “incomprehensible”, according to Sky News’ partner newsroom NBC.
It is now being investigated by state attorney general Letitia James, who called the videos “shocking and disturbing” at a virtual news conference.
Prison officers attacked Robert Brooks while he was handcuffed. Pic: New York Attorney General Office
In the video, Mr Brooks is in handcuffs as he is carried into the infirmary by several prison guards.
They put him on the bed and begin repeatedly punching and kicking him.
He is pulled upright, where his bloodied face is visible on camera, and then yanked from the bed by his shirt collar and pushed up against a window.
One of the fourteen workers involved in the incident has resigned and the rest have been suspended without pay until the process to fire them is complete. The workers include correctional officers, sergeants and a prison nurse.
The officers had not activated their body cameras but they were still on and recorded in standby mode, without audio, during the attack.
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As a result of the incident, all officers will now need to have their cameras activated any time they are engaging directly with prisoners.
Mr Brooks’ family thanked officials for taking action “to hold officers accountable” in a statement this week.
“We cannot understand how this could have happened in the first place,” the family said. “No one should have to lose a family member this way.”
Robert Brooks, who died a day after being attacked by prison officers. Pic: Family handout
The attack happened before 9.30pm on 9 December in a medical exam room after Mr Brooks had been transferred from the Mohawk Correctional Facility to Marcy Correctional Facility.
An autopsy found “preliminary findings show concern for asphyxia due to compression of the neck as the cause of death, as well as the death being due to actions of another,” according to a state corrections office investigative report obtained by an affiliate of Sky News’ partner newsroom WKTV in Utica.
Mr Brooks had been behind bars since 2017 on a 12-year sentence for first-degree assault involving a longtime girlfriend.
Officials declined to say why he had been transferred to the Marcy Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison.
Last year, an independent prison oversight group called The Correctional Association of New York released a report on the Marcy Correctional Facility.
It noted complaints of “rampant” physical abuse by staff members, with 80% of incarcerated people reporting having witnessed or experienced abuse and nearly 70% reporting racial discrimination or bias.
In response to the video, the union that represents workers at the prison said: “What we witnessed is incomprehensible to say the least and is certainly not reflective of the great work that the vast majority of our membership conducts every day.”
It adding what transpired is the “opposite of everything [the union] and its membership stand for.”
The world’s best golfer has suffered a freak injury while cooking Christmas dinner, forcing him to undergo surgery.
Scottie Scheffler sustained a puncture wound after cutting the palm of his right hand on broken glass.
The world number one required surgery as small glass fragments remained in the palm after the accident.
The injury has forced him out of the first tournament of the season, next week’s The Sentry in Hawaii.
Pic: Reuters
But the 28-year-old has been told he will recover in three to four weeks, and he hopes to be back in action at The American Express tournament in California on 16 January.
Scheffler won an Olympic gold and seven PGA Tour titles in the last year and was recently named PGA Tour’s Player of the Year for a third season in a row.
In May, he was arrested by police during the US PGA Championship after he was accused of trying to drive around a traffic jam caused by a fatal accident.
Scheffler’s arrest became a major story at the US PGA Championship. Pic: Matt Stone-USA TODAY Sports via Reuters
Just hours later, he was released and allowed to return to Valhalla Golf Club in Kentucky to play his second round of the tournament.
Criminal charges against Scheffler were later dismissed due to a lack of evidence and a police officer who arrested him was disciplined for not having his bodycam on at the time of the incident.
The man accused of burning a woman to death on a New York subway train has been indicted on murder and arson charges.
Sebastian Zapeta is accused of setting a sleeping woman on fire and then fanning the flames with a shirt, which caused her to be engulfed by the blaze.
He allegedly sat on a platform at Brooklyn’s Coney Island station, opposite the stopped train, and watched as she burned to death.
Authorities are still working to identify the victim.
Zapeta, 33, has been charged with one count of first degree murder, two counts of second degree murder and one count of arson in the first degree.
After a brief hearing in which the indictment was announced, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said: “This was a malicious deed. A sleeping, vulnerable woman on our subway system.”
Mr Gonzalez said police and medical examiners are using fingerprints and advanced DNA techniques to identify the victim, while also retracing her steps before the murder.
“Our hearts go out not only to this victim, but we know that there’s a family,” he said. “Just because someone appears to have been living in the situation of homelessness does not mean that there’s not going to be family devastated by the tragic way she lost her life.”
Officers patrol the platform where the woman died. Pic: AP
Zapeta was initially charged with murder and arson in a criminal complaint earlier this week.
Such filings are often a first step in the criminal process because all felony cases in New York require a grand jury indictment to proceed to trial, unless a defendant waives that requirement.
Zapeta was not present at the hearing. The most serious charge he is facing carries a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole and the indictment will be unsealed on 7 January.
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Zapeta is a Guatemalan who entered the US illegally having already been deported in 2018, officials say.
He was taken into custody last Sunday, after three children called 911 when they recognised him from an image shared by police.
During questioning, prosecutors say he claimed not to know what happened, and noted he consumes alcohol – but did identify himself in photos and videos showing the fire being lit.
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