Zohran Mamdani’s City Hall 9/11 ceremony blew up after the New York City mayor sent a commemorative pen toward chief counsel Ramzi Kassem, whose past client list included an al-Qaeda-linked detainee.
The Friday event brought Mamdani’s administration to City Hall to approve two executive orders before the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, the New York Post reported.
The measures dealt with making the anniversary a Day of Remembrance and Service across the city and strengthening New York City’s emergency response and continuity-of-government planning, according to VINnews.
Mamdani first handed the pen to NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch and asked, “Can you pass this?” according to the Post.
The pen then went to Kassem, who had come into the press conference near the close. Tisch left before any other official in the room.
🚨 NOW: Ugandan Mayor Mamdani is facing major backlash from victims' families after he signed a 9/11 executive order and gave the honorary pen to a lawyer who REPRESENTED an AL-QAEDA TERRORIST connected to the Pentagon attack — NYP
The enemy is inside the gates.
The pen was… pic.twitter.com/AnfVXamkfM
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) September 5, 2026
Fox News reported that Kassem had represented Ahmed al-Darbi, who pleaded guilty to war-crime charges involving al-Qaeda maritime plots, including the 2002 bombing of a French oil tanker off Yemen.
Al-Darbi spent time at Guantánamo Bay. His sister was married to Khalid al-Mihdhar, one of the terrorists on American Airlines Flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon and killed 184 people.
Kassem also started a CUNY legal clinic that gives free legal help to Muslims. His client history includes Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of the pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia University who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
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Some 9/11 relatives ripped the pen handoff. Dennis Warchola, whose firefighter brother died in the North Tower, challenged Kassem’s decision to represent al-Darbi.
“How can you defend a guy like that who wants to do Americans or any innocent person harm?” Warchola said, according to the Post.
Joyce Cohen Day, whose mother died in the South Tower, told the Washington Times that Mamdani intentionally passed the pen “to an al Qaeda lawyer.”
Democratic New York state Assemblyman Kalman Yeger described the moment as “sick,” the Washington Times reported.
Republican Queens Council Member Vicki Paladino told the Post that Kassem “doesn’t even belong in this country, much less in our government.”
Former New York state Senate candidate Maria Danzilo tied the episode to the approaching anniversary.
“I sincerely hope the rest of the country understands just how hard it is to be in New York City with this mayor, and especially as we’re approaching this most serious and solemn day for NYC: 9/11,” Danzilo wrote.
Senator Rick Scott went after Mamdani over the City Hall ceremony.
“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,” Scott posted.
The mayor’s office told the Post that Kassem was there because he and his staff wrote the two orders through his chief counsel role.
The pen fight landed on top of earlier anger over Mamdani’s 9/11 comments and his interview with Hasan Piker, who said in 2019, “America deserved 9/11.”
Some families of victims have asked that Mamdani skip New York City’s 9/11 commemoration. Mamdani initially would not condemn Piker’s comment, then later called it “objectionable and reprehensible.”
A 2023 X post by Mamdani also began circulating again, showing his anniversary message about those killed in New York and the people harmed in the wars that came afterward.
“Nearly 3,000 New Yorkers died on 9/11; 22 years later, the death hasn’t stopped. We mourn our neighbors who died that day. The hundreds of thousands who died in the wars that followed. The unknown millions injured & displaced. In their memory, we work toward a better world,” Mamdani wrote in 2023.
Critics said Mamdani used the anniversary to shift attention to post-9/11 wars without identifying the attackers or directly saying who killed the victims.
Florida Rep. Randy Fine accused Mamdani of refusing to name terrorism as evil.
“Nearly 25 years later, NYC’s Mayor is in bed with Muslim terrorists and refuses to call out evil for what it is. Unfortunately, it seems the city forgot when they elected Jihadi Mamdani mayor. But we never will,” Fine wrote.
Rep. Nancy Mace also objected to how Mamdani framed the attacks.
“Americans were MURDERED by TERRORISTS in the most horrific way,” Mace wrote.
Mamdani has said he intends to be at the 9/11 commemoration to honor victims, survivors, families and first responders. Vice President JD Vance and former presidents, including Biden and Bush, are also expected at the ceremony.
Several victims’ families put together a petition asking that Mamdani not appear, questioning whether his presence would fit the tragedy being marked.
Former New York Gov. George Pataki added pressure on Mamdani after disclosing that he has restrictive airway disease from breathing toxic dust at Ground Zero.
Pataki told the New York Post he was diagnosed roughly five years ago.
“I just look at it as I’m one of the lucky ones,” he told the outlet. “You know, 25 years later, I feel great. I have this minor residual impact from that time. But compared to so many others, I consider myself very lucky.”
Pataki, New York’s last Republican governor from 1995 to 2006, said many people who repeatedly went to Ground Zero after the attacks later faced far more severe health problems.
“The people who were with me at Ground Zero over and over for months after those attacks, many of them have serious illnesses, far more serious than anything I might be experiencing,” he added.
Pataki said he would not object to Mamdani attending if the mayor rejected Piker and condemned the phrase “globalize the intifada.”
“If he says he will have nothing to do with Hasan Piker, and if he says he will condemn the statement, ‘globalize the intifada,’ then I would have no problem with him being here,” he explained.
