Ten Australians were killed on 11 September 2001 when two hijacked Boeing 767 aircraft were flown into the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan and a third plane, a Boeing 757, crashed into the western side of the Pentagon in Washington, DC. Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda group he led took sole responsibility for the attacks immediately thereafter.

Since then, Australia has maintained a continuous military presence in Afghanistan and then in Iraq, countries that soon became the scapegoats for attacks claimed by bin Laden’s affiliation of non-state actors. Of the 19 hijackers who died alongside their victims on 9/11, none were Afghan or Iraqi.