A leading Democratic candidate for Congress in New Jersey interned in 1994 with a Chicago-based nonprofit that federal agents later raided and identified as an al-Qaeda front organization, according to a report published Wednesday by Jewish Insider.
Adam Hamawy, an Egyptian-born former Army combat surgeon now running in New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District, touted his time with the Benevolence International Foundation in a 1996 interview with the Newark Star-Ledger. He said he traveled to Bosnia to help deliver medical supplies to hospitals in Sarajevo and Zenica during the conflict there.
Eight years later, in 2002, FBI and federal agents raided the foundation’s offices. Investigators found weapons, letters from al-Qaeda leaders, a photograph of Osama bin Laden, and documents detailing the terror group’s operations. The 9/11 Commission Report later described the foundation’s Bosnian operation as part of an “impressive array of offices [that] covertly provided financial and other support for terrorist activities” that bin Laden relied upon during the 1990s. Authorities alleged the organization was used by al-Qaeda to “establish a base for operations in Europe against al Qaeda’s true enemy, the United States.”
Hamawy has never been charged or accused of involvement in terrorism. His campaign pushed back hard on the disclosure Wednesday.
“It must be the final days of the election, because the attacks are getting more desperate than ever,” a campaign spokesperson said. The statement described Hamawy as “a young medical student and member of the US military” who volunteered “to provide medical assistance to victims of the Bosnian genocide, per the suggestion the Bosnian mission made to him on how to help via a United Nations-approved route.”
Hamawy is not a first-time figure in controversy. Earlier in the campaign, reporting surfaced that he had an earlier connection to Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, known as “The Blind Sheikh,” the Egyptian cleric convicted in the mid-1990s for conspiring to wage a “war of urban terrorism” against the United States following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Hamawy acknowledged meeting Abdel-Rahman in 1991 and accompanying him on a 13-hour drive to a conference in Detroit, where Abdel-Rahman made remarks about “conquering the land of the infidels.” Hamawy later testified as a defense witness during Abdel-Rahman’s federal terrorism trial.
Despite that record, Hamawy has secured endorsements from several prominent progressive Democrats: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ro Khanna, along with Sen. Bernie Sanders. Sen. Tammy Duckworth has credited Hamawy with saving her life after her helicopter was shot down in Iraq.
He has also drawn attention for his work in the Gaza Strip, where his medical team was briefly stranded in 2024 after the Rafah border crossing closed.
The Democratic primary in New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District, to fill the seat being vacated by Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, is scheduled for next month. Hamawy is considered one of the frontrunners in a crowded field.
