Mayor Zohran Mamdani sparked outrage by handing a ceremonial 9/11 pen to his chief counsel, a lawyer who once represented an al-Qaeda terrorist.
The 48-year-old Ramzi Kassem, who founded a legal clinic at CUNY offering free representation to Muslims, received the symbolic pen Friday at City Hall during executive-order signings ahead of the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Kassem had slipped into the Blue Room press conference roughly 15 minutes late and made a quick exit right after receiving it, following Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch out the door.
Tisch had herself been handed the pen moments earlier, after Mamdani signed the last of two documents — one establishing a Day of Remembrance, another strengthening security against future terror threats. The mayor whispered to her, “Can you pass this?” according to the ceremony’s video. She then awkwardly transferred it to Kassem before hurrying out, becoming the first official to leave the press conference.
“It was calculated,” retired detective and John Jay College adjunct professor 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 is seen on video smirking as he accepts the pen. His past representation of Ahmed al-Darbi, an al-Qaeda operative convicted of terrorism in the 2002 bombing of a French oil tanker in the Middle East, has drawn fierce criticism. That attack was part of an al-Qaeda plot to target global oil trade following 9/11. Al-Darbi was sent to Guantánamo Bay, and his sister married Khalid al-Mihdhar, one of the hijackers of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.
“It’s bulls–t,” slammed Dennis Warchola, whose brother Michael, a firefighter with Ladder 5, was killed in the North Tower. “How can you defend a guy like that who wants to do Americans or any innocent person harm?”
The mayor’s office defended Kassem’s presence, telling The Post that he and his team had written both 9/11 executive orders as part of his chief counsel duties.
That explanation has done little to quell anger from elected officials and victims’ families. “It shows exactly where his loyalties truly lie,” said Council Member Joann Ariola (R-Queens), who called the socialist mayor’s stunt “breathtakingly tone-deaf and disrespectful,” She continued: “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.”
Council Member Vicki Paladino (R-Queens) directed her fire at Kassem himself. “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,” she seethed. “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.”
Kassem also previously defended Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of the pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia University who was detained by ICE.
Former Democratic political consultant David Sivella blasted Mamdani on X: “Was it deliberate on your part to give your Muslim base a hint that this is all BS to pacify other New Yorkers?”
Kassem did not immediately return The Post’s request for comment.
The controversy lands as Mamdani faces mounting pressure from 9/11 families over his plans for the upcoming anniversary memorial ceremony. Multiple outlets have reported that additional victims’ relatives have urged the mayor to stay home from the 25th commemoration, though Mamdani has remained defiant about attending.