Patrica Butenis and religious diginataries at the event

A Sri Lankan, her husband and her unborn child were among the ones who died in the 9/11 attack.

Rahma Salie was of Sri Lankan descent, raised in Japan and married to a Greek-American.

On the now famous day of September 11, 2001, the day the terrorist attacked the World Trade Center of the United States, Rahma, her husband and her unborn child were flying to a wedding in one of the planes which the terrorist hijacked.

Rahma, her unborn child and her husband did not reach the wedding; instead the plane they were traveling became one of the two planes to hit the world trade center.

US Ambassador in Colombo Patricia Butenis said she was holding a morning staff meeting in the US Embassy in Bogota, Colombia when the bad news came to her ear on that fateful day.

It was Butenis who reminded the story of Rahma Salie to us yesterday when the US embassy in Colombo marked the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States.

A Buddhist monk, an Anglican priest, a Hindu priest, a Jewish rabbi, a Muslim imam, and a Roman Catholic priest were there to offer prayers to the innocent people killed on that fateful day.

Butenis described the day as, “A terrible day in American history”.

At the event, Ambassador Butenis turned her attention towards the future and shared a message praising the resilience of the victims of terrorists both in the U.S. and Sri Lanka.

“My deepest wish for Sri Lanka as a country is that it continues to embrace one of its traditional, essential core values, that of its multi-ethnic, multi-religious identity.  That is its true strength and the country must be resilient enough to hold on to it.”

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