New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed an order on Friday marking the city’s official recognition of the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 Islamic terror attacks — and then handed the symbolic pen to a city official linked to the terrorists who carried them out.
The self-described Democratic socialist signed two companion orders in that session — one marking September 11 as an official Day of Remembrance and another regarding security protocols in the case of future terrorist actions — and then quietly passed the pen.
Handing it first to Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, he asked, “Can you pass this?”
Tisch dutifully passed the pen to Mamdani’s chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem, before exiting the room.
Critics argued that Mamdani’s move was not an accident.
“It was calculated,” retired detective and adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice Michael Alcazar told The New York 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,” he added.
Council Member Joann Ariola (R-Queens) said Mamdani’s choice had been “breathtakingly tone-deaf and disrespectful,” adding, “It shows exactly where his loyalties truly lie … 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.”
“This is despicable. @NYCMayor is a disgrace to those who lost loved ones on 9/11. His actions are beyond “tone deaf”, they’re morally bankrupt,” Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) posted.
The overall assessment was simple: Mamdani’s choice wasn’t “tone deaf,” it was “intentional.”
Mamdani raised eyebrows when he first appointed Kassem to serve in his administration, largely because of the attorney’s links to several Islamic terrorists.
Kassem represented Mohammad Mani Ahmad al-Qahtani, who allegedly attempted to assist in the 9/11 hijacking and was held in detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for two decades. Teaching law at City University of New York at the time, he had been working with students over the course of a decade to get him returned to Saudi Arabia. They succeeded in doing so in 2022.
He also represented al Qaeda terrorist Ahmed al-Darbi in court. Al-Darbi pleaded guilty in 2014 in connection with a plot to bomb the French oil tanker MV Limburg off the coast of Yemen.
He pleaded guilty in 2014 in connection with a plot to bomb the French oil tanker MV Limburg off the coast of Yemen, and was sentenced in 2017. In 2018, President Donald Trump’s administration transferred him to the custody of Saudi Arabia.
.png)
.png)
