Congressional Candidate Attacks Front Page as ‘Anti-Islam’ After We Expose His Terror Ties

Two weeks ago, Freedom Center Investigates ran a blockbuster story exposing the troubling background of Adam Hamawy. a New Jersey congressional candidate, who had testified at the Blind Sheikh’s trial.

In 1995, ‘Adam’ Hisham Hamawy testified for the defense in the trial of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman: the Egyptian Islamic terror leader linked to the World Trade Center bombing. Now, Hamawy is running for Congress in New Jersey while promising to defund the military, abolish ICE, and dismantle the Department of Homeland Security.

The Sheikh’s supporters carried out terrorist attacks across Egypt. Others were responsible for the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and Rahman was finally convicted of taking part in “a war of urban terrorism against the United States” that targeted the Statue of Liberty and other New York City landmarks. His supporters were caught preparing bombs and at Rahman’s trial, testimony was introduced about Rahman urging an informant to assassinate Egypt’s president.

Sheikh Rahman, who had demanded a van because there would be six passengers on the trip. Hamawy, apparently sitting behind Rahman, was only one of four others invited to go along.

I reached out to Hamawy, but got no response. His campaign lashed out at us, claiming that we were ‘anti-Islam’ and engaged in “guilt-by-association”.

Hamawy’s campaign pointed out that the initial story was written in FrontPage Magazine, a website affiliated with the anti-Islam David Horowitz Freedom Center, and called it “guilt-by-association attacks on Muslim and Arab candidates.”

But Hamawy’s history with the terrorist leader shows it’s a lot more than just ‘association’.

The Free Beacon picked up the story and got hold of the trial transcript which described Hamawy and the Blind Sheikh’s relationship in more depth.

The story has since been picked up by Fox News, Politico, the Wall Street Journal, and local media.

Hamawy and Abdel-Rahman met in 1991 when the Islamist firebrand delivered a lecture at Matawan-Aberdeen Middle School in Cliffwood, N.J. From there, the Egyptian-born Hamawy said, he followed the Blind Sheikh to speaking events at mosques, visited the cleric in his home, and provided him with translation help.

During his testimony, which Hamawy began with a traditional “salam alaykum” greeting to the Blind Sheikh, he described taking a 13-hour car journey with Abdel-Rahman and some of his associates to a conference in Detroit called “Towards a Global Islamic Economy.” Those associates were Sheikh Abdel Khalid “from the Salam Mosque” in Jersey City, referred to in the court records as a “jihad office.” That mosque, where Abdel-Rahman preached, was the location where the conspirators behind the World Trade Center bombing would meet.

When prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald asked Hamawy whether Abdel-Rahman talked “about conquering the land of the infidels” during the event, Hamawy said, “He might have, yes,” adding that “it wasn’t a commerce thing.”

Hamawy told Fitzgerald that he heard the word “jihad” more than once that weekend.

Several other speakers at the conference were well-known figures in the world of Islamist terrorism. After Abdel-Rahman spoke, attendees heard from Dr. Ahmad Nofal, a Holocaust denier who has falsely accused Israelis of harvesting the organs of Palestinians. A 1995 PBS documentary called Jihad in America describes Nofal as “a known recruiter of Hamas terrorists.”

In his testimony, Hamawy told Fitzgerald that he had heard Abdel-Rahman speak about how the United States and Israel are “the enem[ies] of Islam.” When Fitzgerald asked whether Hamawy heard “about how Muslims had to do jihad against the enemies of Islam,” Hamawy responded, “Of course. That’s what [Abdel-Rahman] always talked about. He talked about jihad, you know?”

A number of figures involving in the trial have since come forward including Michael Mukasey, Patrick Fitzgerald and Andrew McCarthy to discuss their experiences.

Local media eventually got to Hamawy and forced him to go on the record, at which point he kept going on about his patriotism and played the victim, claiming that, as a Muslim, they’re always going to find something to attack.”

Adam Hamawy, now a plastic surgeon in Princeton, dismissed questions about Omar Abdel-Rahman, the so-called Blind Sheikh who played a key role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, calling Abdel-Rahman “a blind old man” and a “well-known person in the community” who only talked about “innocuous things.”

When another reporter asked about whether Hamawy would condemn the sheikh—or the concept of “jihad”—Hamawy laughed.

“Any extremism [of] any kind is bad,” he said, referring to his service as a military doctor. “I’m against all war and all violence.”

He refused to specifically condemn the sheikh or Islamic jihad, instead saying, “I condemn all extremism and all violence of any kind.”

Hamawy told another story under oath at the Blind Sheikh’s trial.

Fitzgerald: “Did you hear defendant Abdel-Rahman prior to the arrest talk with about how America is the enemy of Islam?”

Hamawy: “Yes.”

Fitzgerald: “And you heard prior to the arrest about how Israel is the enemy of Islam, correct?”

Hamawy: “Yes.”

Fitzgerald: “Did you hear about how Muslims had to do jihad against the enemies of Islam before the arrests in June 1993?”

Hamawy: “Of course. That’s what he always talked about. He talked about jihad, you know.”

So much for that. The mainstreaming of Jihad is now up against another test.