Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed an executive order recognizing 9/11 Friday — and then handed the symbolic pen over to his controversial aide who once represented an al-Qaeda terrorist with links to the attack on the Pentagon.
Administration officials were gathered at City Hall for a pair of executive orders — ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks — one establishing a Day of Remembrance and another beefing up security against future terror threats.
After Mamdani signed the last of the documents, Hizzoner gave Police Commissioner Jessica Tish the ceremonial pen, and whispered, “Can you pass this?”
Tisch awkwardly handed it to Mamdani’s chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem, who just snuck into the press conference, before she hurried out of the Blue Room — the first official to exit the press conference.
“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?”
Kassem, a lawyer who famously represented al-Qaeda operative Ahmed al-Darbi, is seen on video smirking as he receives the symbolic pen.
Al-Darbi was sent to Guantánamo Bay after he was convicted of terrorism in the 2002 bombing of a French oil tanker in the Middle East — part of an al Qaeda plot to attack the global oil trade after 9/11. His sister married Khalid al-Mihdhar, one of the 9/11 hijackers of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.
The 48-year-old Kassem, who founded a legal clinic at CUNY that offers free legal representation to Muslims, also defended Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of the pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia who was detained by ICE.
The controversial lawyer and top Mamdani aide wasn’t present during the press conference until the very end, when he snuck in some 15 minutes late — and made a quick exit, right behind Tisch.
“It’s a bit tone deaf to be signing this 9/11 Executive Order with your Chief Counsel, Ramzi Kassem, a former al-Qaeda defense lawyer, in the shot,” blasted former Democratic political consultant David Sivella on X.
“Or was it deliberate on your part to give your Muslim base a hint that this is all BS to pacify other New Yorkers?”
City Hall did not immediately return The Post’s request for comment.
