HIROSHIMA -- A New York retiree who lost her brother in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center participated Tuesday in the 57th memorial service for the 1945 atomic bombing here, sharing wishes for a world without violence.
Rita Lasar, 70, is a member of the September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, an organization of relatives of the terror victims seeking nonviolent solutions to conflict. She also visited Afghanistan earlier this year and met people who lost relatives in U.S. airstrikes.
When she spoke last week during a convention in Hiroshima held by an antinuclear organization, Lasar harshly criticized the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan, which by some accounts has taken more civilian lives than did the terror attacks in the U.S.