Mayor Zohran Mamdani spent Friday signing two executive orders tied to the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, then handed the ceremonial pen to Ramzi Kassem, his chief counsel and a man who spent years defending an al-Qaeda operative convicted in a terrorist plot.
The City Hall ceremony covered a pair of 9/11-related orders, one establishing a Day of Remembrance and another aimed at strengthening the city’s defenses against future terrorist attacks.
After signing the final document, Mamdani handed the pen to NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch and quietly asked, “Can you pass this?” Tisch passed it to Kassem, who had entered the press conference roughly 15 minutes late. He left shortly afterward, just behind Tisch.
Kassem and his legal team actually helped write both executive orders, according to the mayor’s office.
That detail did nothing to quiet the outrage.
Kassem served as lead counsel for Ahmed al-Darbi, an al-Qaeda operative who pleaded guilty in 2014 to conspiracy over the 2002 bombing of the French oil tanker MV Limburg off Yemen. One civilian was killed, and several others were injured. Al-Darbi was convicted in 2017 and transferred from Guantánamo Bay to Saudi Arabia the following year.
Al-Darbi also had a family connection to the September 11 attacks. His sister was married to Khalid al-Mihdhar, one of the hijackers aboard the plane that struck the Pentagon.
Retired NYPD detective Michael Alcazar, now an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, didn’t mince words.
“It was calculated. It happened during a ceremony meant to be about the victims, and no one else.”
Alcazar said Tisch had been “reduced to a prop” while Mamdani put the spotlight on Kassem.
Dennis Warchola’s brother Michael, a Ladder 5 firefighter, was killed in the North Tower. He didn’t hold back.
“It’s bulls–t. How can you defend a guy like that who wants to do Americans or any innocent person harm?”
Elected officials echoed the anger. Council Member Joann Ariola (R-Queens) called the move “breathtakingly tone-deaf and disrespectful,” saying 9/11 families should not have to endure “yet another insult” on the 25th anniversary.
Kassem’s record goes well beyond the al-Darbi case. He served as a senior immigration policy adviser on Biden’s White House Domestic Policy Council, later represented Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University activist detained by ICE following anti-Israel campus demonstrations, and was tapped by Mamdani as chief counsel last December.
The pen controversy lands while Mamdani is already facing anger from some 9/11 families over his plans to attend Friday’s Ground Zero commemoration.
A petition asking the 9/11 Memorial and Museum to bar Mamdani had gathered nearly 80,000 signatures by August. Robert and Elaine Hughes, whose son Kris was killed on the 89th floor of the South Tower, said Mamdani’s attendance could keep them away from the ceremony.
Robert Hughes put it simply: “Just the thought of him there rubs me the wrong way.”
Mamdani has said he will attend and “proudly honor” the victims, survivors and first responders.
Five days before the anniversary, City Hall turned a ceremonial pen into the latest provocation, one more grievance for the families already bracing for what should be a solemn return to Ground Zero.
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