Mamdani's 2015 posts on al-Qaida terrorist return to haunt him

09-Jul-2025

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New York City's Democratic socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is facing fresh scrutiny after his past tweets surfaced in which he appeared to question the FBI's surveillance tactics of Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born cleric later linked to terror outfit al-Qaida, and suggested that American intelligence actions may have contributed to Awlaki's radicalisation.

In a 2015 post on X (formerly Twitter), Mamdani questioned al-Awlaki's surveillance the FBI had done after the 9/11 attacks.

"Why no proper interrogation of what it means for the FBI to have conducted an extensive survey into Awlaki's private life? How could Awlaki have ever trusted the FBI to not release surveillance, especially if he continued to critique [the] state? Why no further discussion of how Awlaki's knowledge of surveillance eventually led him to alqaeda? Or what that says about [the] efficacy of surveillanece?" asked Mamdani on X (formerly Twitter) in 2015.