Adam Hamawy, a Democratic congressman-elect, is heading to Capitol Hill after winning roughly 70% of the vote in New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District. His campaign, however, drew questions about earlier volunteer work with a charity that U.S. authorities later linked to financial and logistical support for al Qaeda.
Hamawy, a plastic surgeon and former U.S. Army medical officer, spent five weeks in Bosnia in 1994 volunteering with the Benevolence International Foundation, or BIF, according to a newspaper interview published two years later. He said at the time that he worked in Sarajevo and Zenica, visiting hospitals to assess their needs and help deliver medical supplies.
Bosnian authorities raided BIF offices in the two cities in 2002. They recovered documents that U.S. investigators connected to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, including correspondence, financial records and details about terrorist training camps. The 9/11 Commission later described BIF’s Sarajevo office as part of a network that secretly provided financial and logistical assistance for terrorist activities.
BIF chief executive Enaam Arnaout pleaded guilty in 2003 to a racketeering charge involving donations collected for humanitarian purposes and diverted to the Bosnian military. Prosecutors later dropped terrorism charges against him. BIF remains on the Treasury Department’s terrorism-related sanctions list.
Hamawy also faced questions during his campaign about his past association with Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, known as the “Blind Sheikh.” Abdel-Rahman was convicted in 1995 of conspiring to carry out terrorist attacks in New York City. Court records show Hamawy accompanied him on a 1991 trip to Detroit, interpreted for him at a press conference and testified on his behalf at his federal trial.
Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor who helped secure Abdel-Rahman’s conviction, said Hamawy’s testimony ultimately supported the prosecution’s case. McCarthy said that, after cross-examination, Hamawy’s evidence did more to reinforce proof of a jihadist conspiracy against the United States than to help Abdel-Rahman.
Hamawy’s campaign has criticized Republican-aligned groups and media coverage of his past, saying they were trying to damage his candidacy. In a statement issued in May, the campaign called him “Donald Trump’s worst nightmare.”
Available reporting has not established that Hamawy took part in terrorist activity or knowingly supported al Qaeda through his humanitarian work in Bosnia. He did not respond to a later request for comment.
