PM: 9/11 failed to shake our belief in democracy
Boris Johnson has said the 9/11 attacks failed to shake the west’s belief in “freedom and democracy.”
In a message to mark the 20th anniversary of the attacks on New York and Washington, the PM said people across the world would could together “in sorrow but also in faith and resolve.”
The New York-born PM said the commemorations of the attack demonstrated “the failure of terrorism.”
The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people, including 67 Brits.
Many of those who perished in New York worked in financial services.
The anniversary is particularly poignant this year as it comes just weeks after the Taliban – the Afghan regime which harboured 9/11 perpetrators al Qaeda – swept back into power in the war-torn country.
The PM’s message, which will be read out today at a memorial event in the Olympic Stadium, emphasised the resilience of the west’s defining values.
“On a crystal clear morning, terrorists attacked the United States with the simple goal of killing or maiming as many human beings as possible, and by inflicting such bloodshed in the world’s greatest democracy, they tried to destroy the faith of free peoples everywhere in the open societies which terrorists despise and which we cherish,” he said.