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Mayor Zohran Mamdani says he will attend New York City's annual 9/11 remembrance ceremony Friday despite mounting criticism from some family members of victims and several prominent Republicans who have called on him to stay away. The controversy centers on the mayor's appointment of Ramzi Kassem as the city's chief legal counsel. Critics have pointed to Kassem's past legal representation of a convicted al Qaeda member whose brother-in-law was among the terrorists who hijacked the plane that struck the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. A petition launched by relatives of 9/11 victims urging the mayor not to attend the annual...

Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed an executive order recognizing 9/11 Friday — and then gave the symbolic pen 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 Tisch the ceremonial pen, and whispered, “Can you pass this?” Tisch awkwardly handed...

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed an executive order honoring the victims of 9/11 on Friday. Then he handed the ceremonial pen to a lawyer who once represented an al-Qaeda terrorist. Yes, really. The surreal ceremony unfolded at City Hall just one week before the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Mamdani gathered senior administration officials to sign two executive orders related to the tragedy. You just knew this was going to be a fiasco. And it was. The first “order” establishes September 11 as an official New York City “Day of Remembrance and Service,” complete with a...

Presumptive Democratic congresswoman and Zohran Mamdani-backed socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier, 32, is dating Mamdani's chief legal counsel, 48-year-old Ramzi Kassem, who is best known for defending al Qaeda terrorists, including a "close associate" of Osama bin Laden. Chevalier confirmed the relationship in a statement shared with City & State. "Ramzi Kassem and I met outside an ICE detention facility, both working to free someone unjustly held," she said. "Over the years, as we collaborated on different projects, our professional acquaintance became a friendship, which grew into a romantic relationship. I'm deeply grateful for such a loving, supportive partner – he's...

On Tuesday, Socialist New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani announced the appointment of Ramzi Kassem as the city’s top attorney. Kassem gained notoriety for defending al-Qaeda terrorist Ahmed al-Darbi when he served as lead counsel. In 2014, al-Darbi pled guilty in connection with an al-Qaeda terrorist plot to bomb a French oil tanker near Yemen in 2002, leaving a civilian dead and several others injured. He was convicted in 2017 and ultimately transferred to Saudi Arabia in 2018. Al-Darbi’s brother-in-law was Khalid al-Mihdhar, one of the five hijackers on American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon during the September...

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has tapped a controversial lawyer who defended an al Qaeda terrorist and a radical anti-Israel campus leader at Columbia for a “high-ranking” position at City Hall, The Post has learned. Ramzi Kassem, who is also a law professor at City University of New York and a member of Mamdani’s transition team for legal affairs, is the top candidate for Chief Counsel, the most important advisory role in the mayor’s office, according to a source close to the transition team. Kassem, 47, was one of the attorneys who defended Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born leader of the pro-Palestinian encampment...

Detained Columbia University protester Mahmoud Khalil will stay locked up in a Louisiana ICE facility for now — as a New Jersey judge refused to consider freeing him on bail during a hearing Friday. Newark federal court Judge Michael Farbiarz declined to hear arguments on whether to free the 30-year-old green card holder — who has become the face of President Trump’s crackdown on students protesting the Israel-Hamas war — during the hour-long hearing, which was attended by his pregnant wife. Instead, the judge said he’d rule first on the feds’ bid to move Khalil’s legal case challenging his deportation...

Ramzi Kassem repped an Al Qaeda terrorist; now he’s setting immigration policy for Biden. “This is not a battle of good versus evil,” Ramzi Kassem wrote in an op-ed that appeared on September 17, 2001. “The perpetrators were probably not driven to their actions by some intrinsic evil or inherent hatred of the good United States.” He went on to argue that the Al Qaeda attack a week earlier was the result of the “resentment these terrorists felt towards the United States” as a result of “our country’s policies.” Two decades later, Kassem, now a CUNY law professor and prominent...

A Guantanamo Bay detainee who was accused of trying to join the 9/11 hijackers has been sent back to Saudi Arabia for ‘treatment for mental illness,’ the Biden Administration said Monday. Mohammad Mani Ahmad al-Qahtani was sent from the famed prison to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia where he will receive treatment at a psychiatric facility. “After two decades without trial in U.S. custody, Mohammed will now receive the psychiatric care he has long needed in Saudi Arabia, with the support of his family,” law professor at the City University of New York Ramzi Kassem, who represented al-Qahtani, said. “Keeping...