Mayor Mamdani asks Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch to pass the ceremonial 9/11 pen to his chief counsel Ramzi Kassem (extreme right)
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani handed the ceremonial pen used to sign two executive orders ahead of the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to his chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem, a lawyer who represented an Al-Qaeda operative with a family connection to one of the 9/11 hijackers.
The incident took place at City Hall during a ceremony focused on 9/11 remembrance and counterterrorism. Mamdani signed an executive order recognising Friday as a 9/11 Day of Remembrance and another aimed at strengthening security against future terror threats.
After signing the final document, Mamdani handed the symbolic pen to Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and quietly asked her, “Can you pass this?” Tisch then handed the pen to Kassem, who had entered the Blue Room roughly 15 minutes late and was present only toward the end of the press conference.
Kassem was seen smirking as he received the ceremonial pen, according to footage of the ceremony. Tisch subsequently left the room, becoming the first official to exit the press conference.
The gesture immediately drew criticism from 9/11 family members, former law-enforcement officials and New York City lawmakers, who accused the Mamdani administration of showing extraordinary insensitivity at a ceremony intended to honour the victims of the September 11 attacks.
Retired detective and John Jay College of Criminal Justice adjunct professor Michael Alcazar described the moment as calculated.
“It happened during a ceremony meant to be about the victims, and no one else,” Alcazar told The Post. He said 9/11 families did not come to City Hall to see Mamdani “spotlight someone whose work intersects with the very ideology that took their loved ones,” while arguing that Commissioner Jessica Tisch was reduced to a “prop” instead of being recognised as the leader of the NYPD.
Dennis Warchola, whose brother Michael Warchola, a firefighter with Ladder 5, was killed in the North Tower, also condemned the gesture.
“It’s bulls–t,” Warchola said. “How can you defend a guy like that who wants to do Americans or any innocent person harm?”
Council Member Joann Ariola, a Republican from Queens, called the episode “breathtakingly tone-deaf and disrespectful,” saying the families of those killed on 9/11 had every right to be outraged.
“The families who lost loved ones on 9/11 have every right to be outraged,” Ariola said. “On the 25th anniversary, City Hall should be honoring their sacrifice with dignity, not forcing those families to endure yet another insult”.
Kassem’s presence at the ceremony has drawn particular attention because of his previous legal representation of Ahmed al-Darbi, an Al-Qaeda operative who was sent to Guantanamo Bay after being convicted of terrorism in connection with the 2002 bombing of a French oil tanker in West Asia.
Al-Darbi was involved in an Al-Qaeda plot targeting the global oil trade after 9/11. His sister married Khalid al-Mihdhar, one of the 9/11 hijackers who was aboard the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.
The 48-year-old Kassem, who founded a CUNY legal clinic providing free legal representation to Muslims, has also represented Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent figure in the pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia University who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Despite his controversial legal history, the Mamdani administration said Kassem was at City Hall because his office was directly involved in preparing the 9/11 executive orders. The mayor’s office told The Post that Kassem and his team wrote both orders as part of his responsibilities as chief counsel.
The explanation has done little to quiet criticism surrounding the decision to have Kassem receive the ceremonial pen at a 9/11 event. Council Member Vicki Paladino, also a Republican from Queens, launched a further attack on Kassem’s involvement, accusing him of being fundamentally hostile to the fight against terrorism.
“Ramzi Kassem said he was inspired by 9/11, not to join the fight against terrorism, but to defend the terrorists themselves,” Paladino said. She further argued that Kassem “doesn’t even belong in this country, much less in our government”.
Paladino described his participation in the 9/11 ceremony as an insult to survivors and Americans who lost family members on September 11, adding that she suspected the controversy was deliberate.
Former Democratic political consultant David Sivella also questioned the symbolism of the gesture in a post on X, asking whether Mamdani had deliberately given his “Muslim base” a signal that the 9/11 commemoration was merely intended to pacify other New Yorkers.
The controversy comes as New York City prepares to mark 25 years since the September 11 attacks, when nearly 3,000 people were killed in the Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks across New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. The Mamdani administration’s decision to place Kassem at the centre of a symbolic moment during the 9/11 ceremony has consequently become the focus of fierce political and public criticism.
