A hardline socialist who's the favorite to be the next mayor of New York City has debunked his own story that claimed his Muslim aunt was too scared to ride the subway after 9/11.
Zohran Mamdani said Monday that he was actually referring to one of his father's distant dead cousins, a woman he named only as Zehra.
Mamdani, 33, made the revelation at a press conference as he sought to get ahead of the debacle ahead of the November 4 mayoral election.
'I was speaking about Zehra fuhi, my father’s cousin, who passed away a few years ago,' he said. Fuhi stands for paternal aunt in Urdu and Hindi.
Last week, Mamdani fought back tears as he told of how the September 2001 terror atrocity had left an aunt who wears a hijab too scared to use public transport in New York City.
'I want to speak to the memory of my aunt, who stopped taking the subway after September 11 because she did not feel safe in her hijab,' he said.
But internet sleuths quickly discovered that Mamdani's only living aunt, a woman called Masuma Mamdani, lived in Tanzania at the time of the September 2001 terror attacks.
An online photo further revealed that Masuma does not wear a headscarf.
Relatives of 9/11 victims also criticized him over the comments, suggesting they were 'insulting and insensitive' and amounted to 'lunacy.'
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