NJ Democrat candidate Dr. Adam Hamawy testified for Blind Sheikh in 1990s terror trial

A trauma surgeon leading the race to succeed retiring Rep. Bonnie Watson-Coleman, D-N.J., knew and testified for the Egyptian-born cleric and convicted terrorist known as the Blind Sheikh during the latter's seditious conspiracy trial.

Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman was among those convicted of seditious conspiracy after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He died in prison at the federal detention center in Butner, North Carolina, in 2017.

Dr. Adam Hisham Hamawy, now a plastic surgeon with a regenerative medicine practice near Princeton, served as a defense witness in Abdel-Rahman's case. His campaign told Fox News Digital that questions about his judgment and past ties to the sheikh amount to guilt-by-association shaming.

Hamawy seeks to replace Watson-Coleman in a crowded primary for the Democratic-leaning district from Trenton through Somerville to the Plainfields, which has not elected a Republican since 1994.

Hamawy and Abdel-Rahman met at a middle school forum in Matawan, New Jersey, in 1991, according to Hamawy's court testimony. Hamawy began accompanying the Blind Sheikh to mosques and joined a 13-hour road trip with him and others, including future FBI informant Emad Salem, from the cleric's Jersey City mosque to an Islamic conference in Michigan.

Hamawy testified about being in a Michigan hotel room with Abdel-Rahman and Salem, where Salem bragged about his bombmaking skills from his time in the Egyptian special forces.

Court documents show Abdel-Rahman often spoke of assassinating Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and called for jihad.

Suspects in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing met at Abdel-Rahman's Jersey City mosque, which court records called a jihad office, according to Front Page Magazine and the Washington Free Beacon. Abdel-Rahman founded Al-Jama’a al-Islamiyya, a group European governments consider terrorist.

Though he did not take part in the World Trade Center bombing, Abdel-Rahman's followers who attended his mosque did. Prosecutors later charged him with plotting urban terrorism against the United States, targeting the George Washington Bridge, the United Nations and part of Interstate 78.

RNC spokesperson Kristen Cianci told Fox News Digital that Hamawy's testimony is a matter of record and voters will not ignore it despite his campaign's efforts.

A Front Page Magazine review of court records found a federal prosecutor described Hamawy as someone who did not want Abdel-Rahman to look bad and did not recall Mubarak discussions until shown a transcript.

Fox News contributor Andrew McCarthy, the former Southern District of New York prosecutor who secured Abdel-Rahman's life sentence, said Hamawy's testimony ultimately aided the prosecution more than the defense. "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.

McCarthy noted the jury accepted Salem's account of the Michigan trip and overwhelming evidence of Abdel-Rahman's calls to assassinate Mubarak left his lawyers arguing Mubarak deserved it. "Not surprisingly, that’s not how the jury saw it."

Hamawy recently appeared on far-left anti-Israel podcaster Hasan Piker's program, pushing a healthcare-not-bombs platform to dismantle the Department of Homeland Security and Pentagon, which he called the Department of War Crimes, and redirect funds to education and healthcare.

His campaign accused media of reviving the Abdel-Rahman association at the behest of wealthy Republicans to protect President Donald Trump from accountability. "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," the campaign told Fox News Digital.

The campaign said Hamawy treated 9/11 victims using his medical skills, served in the military during and after the trial, and testified truthfully as a civic duty. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., credits him with saving her life after her Iraq War helicopter crash. Hamawy in turn credits Duckworth with helping him and a Gazan aid group escape a closed Rafah border by pressing the Biden administration.