A Ceremonial Pen Changes Hands
Mamdani’s first executive order formally designated September 11 as a citywide Day of Remembrance and Service, including plans for a moment of silence and organized volunteer activities.
His second order dealt with New York City’s ability to keep essential government operations running during major emergencies, updating continuity measures dating back nearly two decades.
Among those attending the ceremony were NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, Fire Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore and other senior city officials.
Mamdani’s chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem, was also acknowledged during the event.
After signing the orders, Mamdani handed his pen to Tisch and instructed her to pass it along.
The recipient was Kassem.
Video of the ceremony shows Tisch delivering the pen to the mayor’s chief counsel after Kassem entered the Blue Room near the end of the event.
The mayor’s office subsequently explained that Kassem’s legal team had prepared the executive orders and that the gesture recognized their work.
But Kassem’s history representing defendants in national-security cases made the symbolism especially controversial for critics.
Kassem’s Guantanamo Client
Before joining the Mamdani administration, Kassem built a career as an attorney and law professor representing clients caught up in some of America’s most contentious national-security cases.
The 48-year-old CUNY School of Law professor previously ran legal clinics serving Muslim, Arab and South Asian communities, as well as detainees facing U.S. national-security proceedings.
One of his best-known clients was Ahmed al-Darbi.
Kassem began representing the Saudi national in 2008 and ultimately became his lead civilian defense attorney.
Al-Darbi had been captured in Azerbaijan in 2002 before being held at Bagram Air Base and later transferred to Guantanamo Bay.
In 2014, al-Darbi pleaded guilty before a military commission to charges that included terrorism, conspiracy, attacking civilian objects and aiding the enemy.
The case centered on support and planning connected to an al-Qaeda scheme targeting oil tankers.
That plot included the October 2002 bombing of the French oil tanker MV Limburg near Yemen. One crew member was killed and others were injured.
Al-Darbi was already detained by the United States when the bombing itself occurred.
As part of his plea deal, he cooperated extensively with American authorities before eventually being transferred to Saudi Arabia in 2018 to complete his sentence through a rehabilitation program.
But another detail about al-Darbi’s background is now receiving renewed attention.
He is the brother-in-law of Khalid al-Mihdhar.
Al-Mihdhar was among the terrorists aboard American Airlines Flight 77 when it was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
American authorities had publicly disclosed that family relationship years before Kassem entered the Mamdani administration.
Kassem has represented other Guantanamo detainees as well. More recently, he represented Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil.
9/11 Family Member Blasts the Gesture
For some critics, the issue isn’t that Kassem served as defense counsel. Criminal defendants and military detainees are entitled to legal representation, and representing an unpopular client does not make an attorney responsible for that client’s conduct.
The outrage instead centers on the mayor’s decision to give Kassem a symbolic object from a ceremony specifically dedicated to remembering September 11.
Michael Alazar, a retired detective and adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, argued that the moment was anything but accidental.
“It was calculated,” Alazar 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.”
Dennis Warchola, whose firefighter brother Michael was killed on September 11, was even more direct.
“It’s bulls***,” Warchola told The Post. “How can you defend a guy like that who wants to do Americans or any innocent person harm?”
The mayor’s office maintains that there was a straightforward explanation: Kassem and his staff drafted the orders, making the pen a recognition of their work.
That explanation has done little to quiet critics.
An Extraordinary Choice of Symbolism
No one disputes that lawyers routinely represent defendants accused or convicted of horrific crimes. The American legal system depends on counsel being available even in cases involving deeply unpopular defendants.
But City Hall was not conducting a courtroom proceeding.
It was holding a ceremony devoted to September 11.
And that distinction is precisely why Mamdani’s decision is attracting scrutiny.
A pen used to establish an official September 11 Day of Remembrance could have remained with the mayor, gone to a first responder, been presented to the NYPD or FDNY, or been given to a family representing the nearly 3,000 people murdered that morning.
Instead, Mamdani directed that it be passed to an attorney whose professional history includes representing a convicted terrorism defendant related by marriage to one of the men who hijacked Flight 77.
The mayor’s office may view the gesture as nothing more than recognition for legal staff who wrote the orders.
For grieving families and critics of the administration, however, the optics surrounding one small ceremonial pen have turned what was supposed to be a solemn tribute into yet another controversy at City Hall.
