Retired FBI agent blasts Mamdani for campaigning with WTC bombing co-conspirator

New York City mayoral candidate Zahran Mamdani is “an idiot” for campaigning with an imam linked to the attack, two retired FBI agents who investigated the 1993 World Trade Center bombing told Fox News Digital.

Mamdani attended Friday prayers at Al-Taqwa Mosque on Fulton Street in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, and later posted a smiling photo with Imam Siraj Wahhaj, a Brooklyn cleric named as an unindicted conspirator in the bombing and a longtime advocate for convicted terrorists, raising money for their legal defenses.

“Today at the Taqwa Mosque, I had the pleasure of meeting Imam Siraj Wahhaj, one of the country’s most prominent Muslim leaders and a pillar of the Bed-Stuy community,” wrote Mamdani, who was a young child when terrorists parked a bomb-laden truck in the garage beneath the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

Retired FBI agent Frank Pellegrino, who investigated the Feb. 26, 1993, attack, said seeing the front-runner to be the city’s next mayor with a glare made him disgusted.

“Zahran Mamdani’s embrace of Siraj Wahhaj is an example of Mamdani’s ignorance of history. Either he doesn’t know who Wahhaj is or he doesn’t care. Whatever the case, Mamdani looks foolish,” Pellegrino said.

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John Antsev, another retired FBI agent who was the lead case agent in the 1993 attack, told Fox News Digital Mamdani that he should know better than to take an endorsement from someone like Wahhaj.

“Everyone in politics should be aware of the people they endorse,” Antsev said. He added, “Imam Siraj Wahhaj was a cleric who supported an extremist agenda.”

Wahhaj, whose real name is Jeffrey Kearse, founded the Brooklyn Mosque in 1991 and has a long history of controversy. Following the attack on the World Trade Center, prosecutors identified him as an unindicted conspirator in the bombing after he sponsored the appearance of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, nicknamed the “Blind Sheikh” who was later convicted of masterminding the plot. Wahhaj was not charged with any crimes and denied his involvement in the attack. Wahag also raised money for the legal defense of Mr. Nosair, who assassinated Rabbi Meir Kahane in 1990 and was also convicted of seditious conspiracy in connection with the 1993 bombing.

Wahhaj did not respond to a request for comment.

In court, Wahhaj served as a character witness for Abdul Rahman, describing him as a “respected scholar.” In witness testimony, he also admitted to raising money for the legal defense of Naseer, who was initially acquitted of Kahane’s murder but is now serving a life sentence.

Democratic New York City mayoral candidate Zahran Mamdani speaks during an interview on Fox News’ “The Story with Martha MacCallum” on Wednesday, October 15, 2025, in New York City. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

For Muslims who oppose Wahhaj’s ideological interpretation of political Islam, called political Islam, Mamdani’s alliance with Wahhaj represents a disturbing window into what his term as mayor could bring, with his allegiances to Islamist-sympathetic groups and leaders and anti-American and anti-Semitic views.

Muslim scholar Dalia Ziadeh, a coordinator and research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism and Global Politics in Washington, D.C., said Wahhaj represents the same Islamist ideology that has fueled decades of extremism in the Middle East.

“I am particularly concerned to see mosques used as platforms for political rallying in a free and democratic United States,” she said. “By embracing Wahhaj, Zahran Mamdani marginalizes moderate Muslims and normalizes the extremist ideology that has inspired terrorism on American soil and continues to fuel extremism within segments of the Muslim community today.”

Soraya Deen, founder of the Muslim Women Speakers Movement and co-founder of the Clarity Coalition, a network of Muslims, ex-Muslims and allies challenging Islamic extremism, heard Wahhaj for the first time 20 years ago at a talk to Muslim youth in Los Angeles.

“I was astonished and appalled by his call to destroy America and make Islam great,” she said.

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Dean described the photo of Mamdani with Wahhaj as disturbing, noting that “a religious scholar spewing hatred for the United States — with Mamdani smiling next to him, calling him ‘one of the most prominent Muslim leaders in the country’ — is dangerous for America and dangerous for Muslims.”

There are no women in the photo, because Wahhaj also practices an interpretation of Islam that bars women from the main hall of mosques, believing they will sexually attract men who pray inside. “Despite the sexual jihad women face in the Islamic world, Mamdani poses for a photo op that encourages men who suppress women’s rights,” Dean said.

In June, a political action committee supporting Mamdani, New Yorkers for Lower Costs, launched acceptable $100,000 donations from “Unity and Justice Fund” A political action committee linked to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group that named an unindicted co-conspirator in the trial of five leaders of the Holy Land Foundation. The five leaders were convicted of transferring approximately $12.4 million to Hamas and were sentenced to decades in prison. Mamdani included sympathetic lyrics about the “Holyland Five” in his rap. Earlier this year, Nihad Awad, a co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and a close ally of Lohag, said: He said He was “happy” about the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas terrorists.

Likewise, Wahhaj was advocating the philosophy of exploiting American democracy to advance the conquest of Islam. In 1991, according to videotape At the event, Wahhaj told a crowd of Muslims: “I just want to say this. Brothers and sisters, in my opinion, what Muslims do in America will have a profound impact on Muslims everywhere on this earth. And as long as you remember that if you get involved in politics, you have to be very careful and your leader is for God. You are not getting into politics because that is the American thing to do. You are getting into politics because politics can be a weapon that you use.” For the sake of Islam.”

Frank Pellegrino, retired FBI agent who investigated the 1993 World Trade Center attacks. (Frank Pellegrino)

In 2011, he glowed urge Muslims donate to the legal defense of Aafia Siddiqui, the Pakistani neuroscientist nicknamed the “Al Qaeda Lady” for trying to kill US forces in Afghanistan.

“I think she’s innocent,” he said at a fundraiser in Worcester, Massachusetts. “There is reasonable doubt, and under the law, if there is reasonable doubt, you have to clear it.”

Siddiqi, who worked as a courier for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, is serving an 86-year sentence in a federal prison in Texas for attempted murder and several other felonies.

In a 1992 talk, he glowed Announce And if American Muslims unite, “you won’t have to vote for Bush or Clinton…we will elect our emir and pledge allegiance to him.”

Three years later, he shared his views on the United States, Saying“Do you know what country this is? It’s a trash can. Dirty. Filthy and sick.”

Former US Navy Lieutenant Dr. Zuhdi Jasser witnessed Wahhaj’s keynote address in 1995 at the Islamic Society of North America conference, where the imam recited the Holy Qur’an and declared his desire to replace the US Constitution with Islamic law.

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“There is nothing more clear about Islamic extremism and the dangers of Zahran Mamdani than his friendship with the well-known anti-American jihadist imam Siraj Wahhaj,” said Jasser, who is currently president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. “Mamdani’s loyalty to one of America’s most extreme clerics tells you all you need to know.”

Wahhaj, a 75-year-old convert to Islam, has emerged as a bridge between immigrant Muslim leaders and black converts to Islam in America. He has chaired fundraisers for groups associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, including a group of organizations considered by experts to be legacy groups of the Muslim Brotherhood: the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), and the Muslim American Society (MAS).

In 2003, he He said A society governed by strict Islamic law, where adulterers are stoned and thieves have their hands cut off, “would be superior to American democracy,” the Wall Street Journal said.

In conversations, he glowed He denounced Deemed “controlled by Satan,” the Arabic word for Satan, the U.S. government urged Muslims not to befriend “non-believers,” condemned homosexuality as “the disease of this society,” and supported Islamic laws that punish extramarital sex with 100 lashes and stoning. He denounced Muslims’ friendship with non-Muslims, saying: “Woe to the Muslims who choose infidels” or non-Muslims as their “friends.”

New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zahran Mamdani speaks to supporters at a campaign launch event in Prospect Park on Sunday, August 17, 2025. (Deirdre Heavy/Fox News Digital)

Wahhaj even ordered Muslims to prevent their children from making friends outside the religion.

“Don’t you know that our children are surrounded by infidels?” He said. “I’m telling you, make our children’s hearts rotten and dirty and foul. That’s clear, the principles are clear. They say birds of a feather flock together. And so, when our Muslims hang out with non-Muslims, you become just like them. You talk just like them. You do what they do, you dress like them, you act the way they act, you want to be just like them, because their hearts are rotten, and now they are.” They spoil your heart.”

His personal life was also affected by the scandal. In 2018, three of Wahhaj’s children were Arrested after authorities discovered 11 malnourished children living in a compound in New Mexico where one of his grandchildren died during an attempted exorcism.

The embrace of such a character has sparked controversy over Mamdani’s rule and the Democratic Party’s tolerance of extremist associations. Wahhaj remains a respected figure among some Islamist activists, including Linda Sarsour, who in 2017 described him as a “mentor” and “my favorite person in the room.” Sarsour withdrew from the Women’s March, which she co-founded, amid accusations of anti-Semitism. She has led numerous anti-Israel marches since the October 7 attack, leading chants demanding Israel “from the river to the sea.”

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However, for reform-minded Muslims, the image of the rising American politician celebrating Bahaj carries dark symbolism.

“This sends the wrong message to moderate Muslims who are working hard to separate faith from extremism,” Ziadeh said. “It tells the broader American public that those who aspire to lead this country have forgotten what extremist ideology once did to New York’s skyline.”