i don't see any pomposity. He showed outrage at the terrorists, compassion for the victims and their families. And, if anything, he demonstrated that in his ruling the medical examiner spared many families uneeded added grief.
That's from the article. I see it the same way you do and even after re-reading it, I couldn't find anything in the article to complain about. It is overwhelmingly obvious he is saying they were murdered- it's almost as if the author is wanting to remind us not to start slipping up and thinking of them as suicides- because they weren't, they were killed. Perhaps he overheard an aquaintance call them suicides and after straightening them out on the spot he decided to write an article reminding people that those individuals on 9/11 didn't commit suicide.
Some people I think are just really charged up in a forum like this to find fault with an article and they do so after the first two sentences and ignore what the writer is trying to really say... Just my humble opinion.