Survivors of the 1993 terror attack on the World Trade Center condemned Democrat mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani for a picture he took with a Brooklyn imam who federal authorities have described as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the bombing.
On Friday, Mamdani, 34, posted a photo on social media of himself standing next to Siraj Wahhaj, 75, with a huge grin on his face as the Islamic religious leader has his arm around the democratic socialist’s shoulder.
“Today at Masjid At-Taqwa, I had the pleasure of meeting with Imam Siraj Wahhaj, one of the nation’s foremost Muslim leaders and a pillar of the Bed-Stuy community for nearly half a century,” Mamdani wrote on X.
“A beautiful Jummah,” he added, referring to the weekly congregational prayer.
Former Port Authority Executive Director Stan Brezenoff told the New York Post that “nobody should minimize what happened” when Islamic extremists set off a car bomb in the North Tower’s parking garage on Feb. 26, 1993, in an effort to bring down both towers.
Brezenoff’s offices were located in the World Trade Center at the time. Six people were killed, and more than a thousand were injured in the attack.
“It was a hellish experience dwarfed by the unimaginable atrocity on 9/11,” he told the outlet, noting that the 2001 attack that succeeded in toppling the towers made many people forget the original attack on the complex in the heart of the city’s Financial District.
“The hospitals were overwhelmed,” Brezenoff said, recalling how the twin skyscrapers were closed “for months” and that employees were afraid to return when they finally reopened.
“People didn’t want to go back to work,” he said. “There was trepidation.”
While Wahhaj never faced charges in the attack, he was heavily scrutinized by federal investigators after they discovered that some of the conspirators had previously attended his mosque.
Prosecutors reportedly believed that Wahhaj somehow played a role in the bombing, but authorities never had enough evidence to charge him.
The imam has denied any involvement in terrorism but publicly defended the attackers and called the FBI and CIA at the time the “real terrorists.”
Maria Danzilo, 69, whose sister had to flee the North Tower on the day of the ’93 attack, questioned why Mamdani would want to “trigger people” in such an “unnecessary” way.
“Don’t you want to heal the past?” she told the Post. “Do we really want to make people so upset?”
“It just seems like it’s not good for the city after so many terrible things have happened.”
“These incidents are very personal to people in New York,” she added. “They are our family members, our friends, our neighbors, people we care about.”
Danzilo, who works for the Fix the City PAC, which supports former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the mayoral race, said her anger at Mamdani’s photo op with Wahhaj is unrelated to supporting the Democrat nominee’s opponent.
“These weren’t abstract ‘events’ for so many New Yorkers,” she said. “They were life-changing events.”
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
