The relatives of two separate 9/11 victims delivered strident political statements from the stage during an annual remembrance ceremony on Friday, accusing American officials of conspiring to conceal the involvement of Saudi Arabia in the attacks.
Both implored the Trump administration to support their calls for the release of more information.
The first was Terry Strada, an official with 9/11 Families United, whose husband was killed in the attack. Her organization has tried for years to pursue action against the Saudi government in federal court.
Ms. Strada accused Saudi Arabia of involvement in the attacks and criticized the assembled elected officials, a group which includes every living former president, of shielding that country from accountability.
“How can it be 25 years and still we have no justice for the role Saudi Arabia played in your murder?” said Ms. Strada, to cheers and applause from some in the crowd. “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 described the actions of elected officials as “one betrayal after another” but said, “President Trump can still change that: tell the Saudis to stop lying.”
She also thanked Vice President JD Vance for attending the ceremony, and asked him to deliver a message to Mr. Trump: “Stand with the families, stand with survivors, stand with Americans.”
Most of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudi nationals, but the government of the kingdom has denied involvement in the attack. F.B.I. agents who secretly investigated potential Saudi connections to the attacks for more than a decade could not find a clear link, according to a joint investigation by The New York Times Magazine and ProPublica that was published in 2020.
Not long after Ms. Strada spoke, a nephew of Lisa Marie Terry, a vice president of Marsh & McLennan who died in the attack, said from the stage: “For 25 years, the deep state has hidden the truth about what happened that day 25 years ago.”
He also laid blame for the terror attack at the feet of the Saudi government: “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.”
Later in the ceremony, the widow of one man killed in the attacks, David Garcia, concluded her time on the dais by reading a poem she wrote for her husband. It also referred to a possible plot to cover up the truth about the attacks.
She said the last 25 years had “not dimmed the cause” or dissuaded her from her desire to seek justice for his death. She added: “while institutional agendas allow them to hide, the planners and powers have never been tried”
A spokesman for the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, which organizes the ceremony each year, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.
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