Editor’s note: Setting the record straight on Mamdani’s lawyer

New York City’s Chief Counsel Ramzi Kassem shouldn’t be condemned for his work legally representing an al-Qaida member. He should be thanked.

Take it from retired Lt. Cmdr. Travis Owens, who served 20 years as a Navy JAG lawyer, and worked alongside Kassem at Guantánamo Bay.

“Aside from the fact that it’s un-American to accuse a defense attorney of being aligned with his defendant, it’s also illogical,” Owens told City & State.

The pair each represented Ahmed al-Darbi – Kassem as the civilian lawyer, Owens as the military lawyer – as he pleaded guilty to helping plan the 2002 suicide bombing of a French oil tanker off the coast of Yemen. Al-Darbi then cooperated, providing critical intelligence and testimony that prosecutors and defense lawyers declared was “unprecedented in similar counterterrorism prosecutions to date.”

“Ramzi deserves credit for that,” Owens said. Born in Beirut and raised across the Middle East before coming to the U.S. for college, Kassem could speak Arabic and relate to al-Darbi and other clients in a way that most military lawyers couldn’t.

“To have Ramzi on the case, I mean, you couldn’t have asked for a better situation in terms of the government being able to get what it wanted to get out of the defendant,” Owens said.

President Donald Trump seemed to agree. Given al-Darbi’s plea deal, and his level of cooperation, Trump allowed him to be repatriated to Saudi Arabia in 2018 and serve out his sentence in his home country. Al-Darbi was the first – and apparently, still the only detainee released from Guantánamo over Trump’s two terms.

Kassem deserves credit for being a good lawyer there too, Owens said. “The fact that he got somebody out while the current administration was in office – that, to me, is mind-boggling, to be honest with you.”

Kassem’s record has come under intense scrutiny around the ginned up outrage over how New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim leader, should be commemorating 9/11.

After the mayor did his mayoral duties, and signed an executive order declaring Sept. 11 a day of remembrance and service, and updated the city’s emergency preparedness plans, he handed a ceremonial pen to Kassem – who, as the mayor’s top lawyer, proudly helped write those very orders. The New York Post wrote a story calling this anodyne act offensive, quoting two City Council members declaring him disloyal to America. Others followed.

And now the fact that Mamdani even appointed Kassem has been cited constantly as a reason the mayor shouldn’t attend the Friday ceremony honoring the victims of terrorism at ground zero.

Kassem himself is staying quiet, declining to comment. But he asked Owens, his old colleague, to speak with a journalist and share the context. Owens lives in California, now a Democrat who grew up as a right-wing Republican in Tennessee. He’s got no particular thoughts on Mamdani. But he wanted to help set the record straight, after seeing his old colleague under fire.

Everything touching Sept. 11, 2001, is emotionally charged, and that’s understandable. Defense attorneys, in particular, are used to vitriol. But the record should be set straight, about a man who upheld the American values of zealous representation, even through one of our country’s dark chapters at Guantánamo Bay.

Al-Darbi “was providing critical stuff,” Owens said. “He was the key cooperator in helping the U.S. government stop terrorist attacks. Without Ramzi, I don’t think that’s going to happen.”