9/11 families request NYC mayor be barred from anniversary

Families of September 11 victims are calling for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to be excluded from the 25th anniversary commemoration at Ground Zero, citing concerns over his associations and public record. A petition urging organizers to bar him from the event has garnered thousands of signatures, including more than 300 from verified relatives of those killed in the 2001 attacks.

The petition, hosted on Change.org, argues that the mayor’s presence would be inappropriate and hurtful, detracting from the solemn purpose of the ceremony. It highlights several points of contention, including Mamdani’s past social media defenses of Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaeda propagandist; his appointment of Ramzi Kassem as city chief counsel, a lawyer who previously defended a convicted al-Qaeda operative; and his praise for Imam Siraj Wahhaj, who was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The petition also references the mayor’s perceived reluctance to unequivocally condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada” and notes writings by his father, a professor, that discussed suicide bombers in the context of modern political violence shortly after the 2001...