The New Jersey plastic surgeon leading the Democratic primary for New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District, Adam Hamawy, is facing intense criticism from victims and survivors of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing over his years-long friendship with the “Blind Sheikh” terrorist mastermind who inspired the attack, the Free Beacon’s Jon Levine reports. The victims are shocked and horrified that a close associate of the Muslim cleric—Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the bombing—could soon be a member of Congress.
“I would never vote for Hamawy because of this and again, saying that as a lifelong Democrat and someone who really wants to keep New Jersey blue, I would find another Democrat to vote for even if it meant writing in someone,” said Michael Macko, whose father worked at the World Trade Center as an assistant chief mechanical supervisor and was killed by the blast while on his lunch break. “I could not with a clear conscience ever vote for this man. Nor would I encourage anybody else to. Some things are just not forgivable.”
James Outerbridge, who survived both the 1993 bombing and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, said Hamawy “doesn’t deserve to run for political office in our country,” adding, “There’s no place for people like this.” Another survivor, Charles Maikish, the director of the Port Authority World Trade Department at the time of the bombing, said of Hamawy’s relationship with Rahman: “Personally, it disgusts me. For somebody that has befriended that group, or the head of that sect that perpetrated such a heinous crime, to me, is just totally against what would be a free, open, democratic society.”
“The scandal has been slowly percolating in New Jersey since the Free Beacon first flagged a 1995 New York Times article labeling Hamawy a ‘supporter’ of the radical cleric,” Levine writes. “Hamawy was a defense witness in [Rahman’s] spectacular trial and described the terrorist as a ‘leader of the community’ on the campaign trail just last week. … Hamawy has never denied his relationship to the sheikh—who died in prison in 2017—but has attempted to distance himself from the issue by blasting the story as ‘right-wing, MAGA smears.’”
Hellbound and Down 