Maureen Santora’s heart leapt for joy yesterday when she heard the five Guantanamo terror detainees confess their guilt in court to the 9/11 terror attacks that killed her New York firefighter son, Christopher – whose picture she held aloft in the courtroom.
“I wanted my son to be part of it. I wanted him to see it,” she told the Los Angeles Times, explaining why she displayed the photo of the 23-year-old probationary firefighter, who was killed at the World Trade Center as he responded to the attacks that fateful morning in 2001.
Dressed in black, Santora was one of nine relatives of the 2,973 victims of the worst terror attack on American soil to watch the proceedings in person yesterday – the first time any family members have been allowed to do so.
It was a moment that had her rejoicing. “When they admitted their guilt, my reaction was, ‘Yes!’ ” said Maureen, of Long Island City, after watching the proceedings from behind a glass partition in the back of the courtroom in Cuba.
“My inclination was to jump up and say, ‘Yay!’ But I managed to maintain my decorum.”
Before leaving for the trial, Santora – accompanied to Gitmo by her husband, Al,-said she had wanted to meet her son’s killers face to face.
“I need to see these individuals eyeball to eyeball,” she had said at the time. “I want to see what they look like.”
And she added, “I hope they stare us in the face and we stare back. I want these folks to know it wasn’t just two towers they knocked down. They have altered our lives permanently.”
That did not happen – by all accounts, the defendants seemed essentially unaware of the victims’ relatives as they moved forward with their dramatic display of declaring their guilt to undercut the proceedings against them.