House Dem frontrunner's connections to ‘Blind Sheikh’ terrorist trial resurface and draw GOP fire
A trauma surgeon seen as the current frontrunner to succeed a retiring House Democrat was an acquaintance of and defense witness for the Egyptian-born cleric and convicted terrorist known as the "Blind Sheikh" in the seditious conspiracy trial that put the latter away for life.
Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman was one of several people convicted of seditious conspiracy in the aftermath of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Abdel-Rahman later died in prison at the federal detention center in Butner, North Carolina, in 2017.
Dr. Adam Hisham Hamawy, now a plastic surgeon who runs his own "regenerative medicine" practice near Princeton, was one of the witnesses for the defense in Abdel-Rahman’s case and now faces questions about his judgment and past association with the sheikh, which his campaign told Fox News Digital amount to "guilt-by-association" shaming.
Hamawy is running to replace Rep. Bonnie Watson-Coleman, D-N.J., in a crowded primary for the blue-favored district spanning Trenton through Somerville to the Plainfields that has not elected a Republican since 1994.
Hamawy and Abdel-Rahman first met at a middle school forum in Matawan, New Jersey, in 1991, according to the former’s testimony in court, as he began accompanying the Blind Sheikh to mosques and even took a 13-hour road trip with him and others, including future FBI informant Emad Salem, from the cleric’s home mosque in Jersey City to an Islamic conference in Michigan.
In his testimony, Hamawy recounted being in a Michigan hotel room with Abdel-Rahman and Salem, where the latter was saying he was "bragging about his abilities" in bombmaking from his time in the Egyptian special forces.
Abdel-Rahman regularly verbalized envisioning the assassination of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and spoke of jihad, according to court documents.
Abdel-Rahman’s mosque was also where several 1993 World Trade Center bombing suspects would meet, according to Front Page Magazine and the Washington Free Beacon.
Court records characterized the Jersey City mosque as a "jihad office," according to reports, as Abdel-Rahman had also founded Al-Jama’a al-Islamiyya, a group considered a terrorist organization by European governments.
While he did not directly participate in the World Trade Center bombing, followers of Abdel-Rahman who frequented his mosque did, and the government later arrested him on charges of a plot to wage "urban terrorism against the United States" by targeting Mid-Atlantic landmarks such as the George Washington Bridge, the United Nations and part of Interstate 78.
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RNC spokesperson Kristen Cianci told Fox News Digital that Hamawy’s testimony is a "matter of record" and that his campaign can try to "sweep this under the rug but voters won’t ignore it."
According to Front Page Magazine’s review of the thousands of pages, a federal prosecutor summarized Hamawy in part as someone who "didn’t want the defendant, Abdel-Rahman, to look bad," and didn’t recall discussions about Mubarak until a transcript was shown to him.
Fox News contributor Andrew McCarthy — who was formerly the Southern District of New York prosecutor credited with putting Abdel-Rahman away for life — said that while Hamawy was a witness for the terrorist, his testimony helped the government more than his acquaintance.
"As was uniformly the case with witnesses presented in the extensive defense case, his testimony, once cross-examination was over, did more to bolster the prosecution’s proof of a jihadist terrorism conspiracy against the United States than to help the accused," McCarthy said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
McCarthy said the jury credited Salem’s recollection of their trip to Michigan, and that the evidence Abdel-Rahman called for Mubarak’s assassination had been so overwhelming, that the Blind Sheikh’s attorneys were reduced to "arguing, in essence, that Mubarak had it coming."
"Not surprisingly, that’s not how the jury saw it."
Hamawy also recently appeared on far-left anti-Israel podcaster Hasan Piker’s program, where he advocated for a "healthcare, not bombs" platform that would "dismantle" the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon — which he monikered "The Department of War Crimes" — and instead divert funding to education and healthcare.
Through his campaign, Hamawy blasted the media for resurrecting his time with Abdel-Rahman and his witness testimony in the case, with his campaign characterizing the reports as an attempt by wealthy Republicans to shield President Donald Trump through the press from lawmakers who would hold his feet to the fire.
"It’s unsurprising that the RNC and Republican billionaire-backed outlets are trying to cast Dr. Adam Hamawy in a negative light: he’s Donald Trump’s worst nightmare," Hamawy’s campaign told Fox News Digital on Monday when presented with the association with Abdel-Rahman and related reporting.
Hamawy’s campaign added that he used his medical background to treat victims of the ensuing 9/11 attacks at the World Trade Center and said the doctor’s "patriotism and love of this country are at the core of his values."
Instead, the campaign said, Republicans and other critics are using "bad-faith, guilt-by-association attacks" on Muslim and Arab candidates.
"He was in the military at the time the events litigated in the trial took place, during the trial, and after the trial," the campaign said, adding he performed his civic duty to testify truthfully — while noting that Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., credits him with saving her life after her helicopter crashed during the Iraq War.
In turn, Hamawy credited Duckworth with saving his life when he and a Gazan aid group were trapped by a closed Israeli border at Rafah that the senator pressed the Biden administration to act upon.
Voters will decide whether Hamawy’s role in the case reflects routine legal duty or a deeper question about his judgment as they choose among a crowded Democratic field.