The Blind Sheikh's followers detonated a truck bomb in the World Trade Center in 1993 and killed six Americans.
New Jersey just elected a congressman who told reporters this spring the sheikh only talked about innocuous things.
Under oath in 1995, he told prosecutors something completely different.
Hamawy Admitted Under Oath That the Blind Sheikh Preached Jihad Against America
Adam Hamawy is a plastic surgeon and former Army combat surgeon who won New Jersey's deep-blue 12th Congressional District yesterday with 70% of the vote.
His "mentor" was Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman – the Egyptian cleric convicted in 1995 of conspiring to wage a war of urban terrorism against the United States. His followers carried out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
When reporters asked Hamawy in May to condemn him – the man who also conspired to blow up the Lincoln Tunnel, the Holland Tunnel, the George Washington Bridge, and the United Nations headquarters – he laughed.
Abdel-Rahman was just "a blind old man," Hamawy said – a "leader of the community" who spoke about "innocuous things."
He refused to name the sheikh or renounce jihad.
"I condemn all extremism and all violence of any kind," he said.
Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald had a different conversation with Hamawy in 1995, under oath, when he asked whether Abdel-Rahman talked about jihad against America's enemies before the arrests.
"Of course. That's what he always talked about. He talked about jihad, you know?"
Fitzgerald asked whether Abdel-Rahman had talked about "conquering the land of the infidels" at a conference in Detroit that Hamawy attended with him.
"He might have, yes," Hamawy testified. "It wasn't a commerce thing."
Hamawy testified that he shared a hotel room with Abdel-Rahman at that conference.
The car that drove them to Detroit included associates from the Salam Mosque in Jersey City – a location federal records describe as a "jihad office" where the bombing conspirators would meet.
Months after the bombing, with Abdel-Rahman already the lead suspect, Hamawy called the cleric directly.
"If you need anything, you can just give me a call," trial transcripts show him telling Abdel-Rahman.
Michael Mukasey – the federal judge who oversaw Abdel-Rahman's trial – wrote in the Wall Street Journal: "Mr. Hamawy was more than a casual traveling companion of Abdel Rahman."
He is now a United States congressman-elect.
The al-Qaeda Front Group Adam Hamawy Volunteered for in Bosnia
The al-Qaeda connections don't stop at Abdel-Rahman.
In 1994, he traveled to Bosnia with the Benevolence International Foundation – a charity the U.S. Treasury Department designated as a terrorist financier in 2002.
The organization traces back to a network founded by Osama bin Laden's own brother-in-law.
Hamawy spent five weeks delivering medical supplies in Sarajevo and Zenica – the same cities where Bosnian authorities later raided BIF offices and recovered documents linking the organization to bin Laden directly.
The 9/11 Commission identified the BIF's Sarajevo office as a node in the network that secretly moved money and support to al-Qaeda.
The organization's CEO pleaded guilty to racketeering for diverting charitable funds to foreign fighters.
BIF remains on the Treasury Department's terrorism-related sanctions list today.
Hamawy's campaign called scrutiny of his record a Republican smear operation.
The DNC congratulated him on his victory anyway.
Ilhan Omar and CAIR Backed the Man Democrats Just Sent to Congress
CAIR endorsed Hamawy in March – the same organization whose leader, Nihad Awad, said publicly he was "happy to see" the October 7 massacre.
Rep. Ilhan Omar added her endorsement.
Hamawy also volunteered in 2024 at a Gaza hospital Hamas used as a command center.
Mohammed Sinwar – one of the masterminds of October 7 – was killed in a terror tunnel directly beneath the building's emergency room.
Hamawy had told reporters he did not believe there were Hamas tunnels under the hospital.
He will now receive classified intelligence briefings and sit on committees that vote on national security legislation.
The man who swore under oath that his mentor preached jihad against America – then told voters thirty years later it was all innocent – just won a congressional seat with 70% of the vote.
Democrats didn't stumble into this. They knew the record. They backed him anyway.
Months after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Adam Hamawy called the man who organized it and told him: "If you need anything, you can just give me a call."
Thirty-three years later, the Democratic Party made that call back.
Sources:
- Jon Levine, "New Jersey Dem Congressional Candidate Testified on Behalf of Terror Mastermind 'Blind Sheikh,'" Washington Free Beacon, May 4, 2026.
- Jon Levine, "Democratic Plastic Surgeon Running for Congress Refuses To Denounce 'Blind Sheikh' Terror Plotter," Washington Free Beacon, May 8, 2026.
- Pedro B. Rodriguez-Aparicio and Charles Creitz, "Dem Newcomer Heads to Washington Despite Past Ties to al Qaeda-Linked Group," Fox News, November 4, 2026.
- U.S. Department of the Treasury, "Treasury Designates Benevolence International Foundation and Related Entities as Financiers of Terrorism," November 19, 2002.
- National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report, July 22, 2004.