New York Post
Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed an executive order recognizing 9/11 Friday — and then gave the symbolic pen to his controversial aide who once represented an al-Qaeda terrorist with links to the attack on the Pentagon.
Administration officials were gathered at City Hall for a pair of executive orders — ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks — one establishing a Day of Remembrance and another beefing up security against future terror threats.
After Mamdani signed the last of the documents, Hizzoner gave Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch the ceremonial pen, and whispered, “Can you pass this?”
Tisch awkwardly handed it to Mamdani’s chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem, who just snuck into the press conference, before she hurried out of the Blue Room — the first official to exit the press conference.
“It was calculated,” retired detective and adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice Michael Alcazar told The Post.
“It happened during a ceremony meant to be about the victims, and no one else. 9/11 families didn’t come to City Hall to watch Mamdani spotlight someone whose work intersects with the very ideology that took their loved ones. Commissioner Jessica Tisch was reduced to a prop rather than acknowledging her role as the leader of the NYPD.”
Kassem, a lawyer who famously represented al-Qaeda operative Ahmed al-Darbi, is seen on video smirking as he receives the symbolic pen
“How can you defend a guy like that who wants to do Americans or any innocent person harm?”
“The families who lost loved ones on 9/11 have every right to be outraged. On the 25th anniversary, City Hall should be honoring their sacrifice with dignity, not forcing those families to endure yet another insult.”
Al-Darbi was sent to Guantánamo Bay after he was convicted of terrorism in the 2002 bombing of a French oil tanker in the Middle East — part of an al Qaeda plot to attack the global oil trade after 9/11. His sister married Khalid al-Mihdhar, one of the 9/11 hijackers of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.
The 48-year-old Kassem, who founded a legal clinic at CUNY that offers free legal representation to Muslims, also defended Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of the pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia who was detained by ICE.
The controversial lawyer and top Mamdani aide wasn’t present during the press conference until the very end, when he snuck in some 15 minutes late — and made a quick exit, right behind Tisch.
The mayor’s office told The Post that Kassem was present at the ceremony because the al Qaeda-defending lawyer and his team wrote both 9/11 executive orders as part of his duties as chief counsel.
Ramzi Kassem said he was inspired by 9/11 — not to join the fight against terrorism, but to defend the terrorists themselves. He doesn’t even belong in this country, much less in our government,” seethed Council Member Vicki Paladino (R-Queens).
“His participation in anything related to 9/11 is an insult to every New Yorker who survived that day, and indeed all Americans. But I suspect that’s the point.
“Was it deliberate on your part to give your Muslim base a hint that this is all BS to pacify other New Yorkers?” former Democratic political consultant David Sivella blasted on X.
Kassem did not immediately return The Post’s request for comment.
