A progressive darling leading in Democratic primary polls in New Jersey‘s 12th District has drawn scrutiny for his connections to a terrorist mastermind and alleged work with an al Qaeda front organization in Bosnia.Dr. Adam Hamawy, who earned national fame for his work in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas war, has earned endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) for his progressive congressional campaign. His congressional run has hit its first major roadblock, after media outlets resurfaced revelations about his decades-old deep connections to an infamous terrorist mastermind implicated in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.Hamawy testified that he met Omar Abdel-Rahman, better known as the “Blind Sheikh,” in 1991. Abdel-Rahman was the founder and spiritual leader of Al-Jama’a al-Islamiyya, an Islamist terrorist group involved in political violence against the Egyptian government and the United States. He was arrested in 1993 and convicted of seditious conspiracy and terrorism, earning him a life sentence in solitary confinement.
Hamawy formed a close relationship with the Islamic radical shortly after their meeting, even though Abdel-Rahman had already, by 1991, been charged with providing spiritual support for the assassination of former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. In the court transcript for Abdel-Rahman’s trial for the 1993 bombing, Hamawy was quoted as warmly greeting Abdel-Rahman with “asalamu alaikum” in court, getting a reciprocal greeting in response.
