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Of all of the images of 9/11, it remains one of the most unforgettable.

Frozen in mid-air, perfectly vertical as he plunges thousands of feet from the North Tower, he became known simply as The Falling Man.

His last moments became a symbol of the plight of those trapped in the burning buildings after the attacks. The 200 or so who took the awful decision to jump rather than die in the flames.

Although the photograph is ­instantly recognisable 10 years on, the man’s identity is still unclear. Grieving ­relatives claim he is Jonathan Briley, a sound engineer who worked in the Tower.

But the man who took the picture says the identity of its subject is less important than what it represents.

“The Falling Man is an unknown soldier,” says veteran Associated Press photographer Richard Drew. “There’s no blood, there’s no violence. It’s just this quiet picture of this man falling.”

Richard had been covering a show at New York Fashion Week when the first plane hit the North Tower at 8.46am.

After a frantic call from his editor, he ran to the World Trade Center. He spotted people jumping – and turned his camera lens on them.

The Falling Man caused a furore and it was quickly pulled from newspapers and TV for fear of upsetting relatives.

But a decade on, Richard says: “I hope people will now be able to accept it’s part of what happened that day.”

No one will ever be certain who The Falling Man is. But the relatives of Jonathan Briley believe it’s him.

The 43-year-old worked at the ­Windows of the World restaurant at the top of the North Tower and wore a uniform of black trousers and white shirt. Often he wore his favourite old orange T-shirt beneath his uniform.

Richard took 12 shots of the man’s fall and in the final frame his shirt had blown off to reveal an orange T-shirt.

Jonathan’s sister Gwendolyn says: “No one will ever know for sure, but I thought of him as a man that took his life in his hands for just a second.

“Did he have so much faith that he knew God would catch him or was he afraid of the end up there?”