CORRECTION: This story has been updated to reflect that at the time of Hamawy’s work with BIF, was not suspected of having any ties to Al Qaida, and the organization was praised by a U.S. Envoy. We regret not including those facts.
New Jersey Democratic House candidate Adam Hamawy worked for an nonprofit in the 1990s that was later investigated as an Al-Qaida affiliate before it was shut down.
Hamawy said in a 1996 interview that he had passed out humanitarian supplies around Bosnia two years earlier for the Benevolence International Foundation (BIF), the Jewish Insider reported, citing the archived story from the Newark Star-Ledger. At the time, there were no indications BIF was affiliated with Al Qaida, and a U.S. government envoy praised the humanitarian work of the organization.
The U.S. government and United Nations (UN) later identified the Illinois-based foundation as a clandestine funding source for Al-Qaida and 9/11 architect Osama bin Laden.
No evidence has emerged that Hamawy was in contact with Al-Qaida himself or participated in anything other than humanitarian work for BIF.
“I worked in Sarajevo for 10 days and then the rest in Zenica, a large regional center in central Bosnia,” Hamawy, who was born in Egypt, reportedly told the paper at the time. “We went out to hospitals around the area and in the mountains to check what supplies they needed and we tried to deliver them.”
Hamawy’s campaign did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment. He has received endorsements from high-profile Democrats such as Muslim and Somali-born Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The Muslim candidate previously came under fire for his past association with convicted terrorist mastermind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, for whom he worked as a translator and testified in his defense in his 1996 federal trial in New York, Jewish Insider and the Washington Free Beacon reported. Abdel-Rahman, nicknamed “the Blind Sheik,” and co-defendants were convicted of roles in the deadly 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other terrorist plots.
“He did speak about violent things that I think most people disagree with and most people condemn, including myself,” Hamawy told The Philadelphia Inquirer about the Blind Sheik. “But it wasn’t the only thing he spoke about.”
Hamawy’s past ties to extremists run deeper than previously acknowledged, Jewish Insider’s report found. A 2002 federal investigation of BIF found extensive communications between the foundation and Al-Qaida, financial transactions and records describing a plan to “establish a base for operations in Europe against al Qaeda’s true enemy, the United States,” courtrecordsshow.
A U.S. envoy under former President Bill Clinton visited a BIF director in 1994 and “praised BIF and its efforts to provide humanitarian relief,” a court filing in the case says. BIF worked with international groups such as the World Health Organization, the UN’s International Children’s Emergency Fund and Red Crescent, according to the document.
The Democrat dismissed his critics as bigoted in May 7 comments to InsiderNJ, touting his past work as a doctor for the U.S. in the Iraq War and a responder on 9/11. He also served in war-torn Gaza after the 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel and helped save Democratic Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s life from injuries in the Iraq War, the New Jersey Globe reported.
“As a Muslim, they’re always going to find something to attack,” he told InsiderNJ.
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