A Democrat now making a strong run for a New Jersey congressional seat pointedly refused to condemn his late mentor—the notorious, terror-plotting "Blind Sheikh"—and claimed the sheikh was just a gentle old man when local media confronted the candidate on Thursday.
Adam Hamawy, now a plastic surgeon in Princeton, dismissed questions about Omar Abdel-Rahman, the so-called Blind Sheikh who played a key role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, calling Abdel-Rahman "a blind old man" and a "well-known person in the community" who only talked about "innocuous things."
"He was a leader of the community that talks about how to pray, how to wash, how to practice as a normal Moslem. ... He wasn't preaching death and destruction all the time," Hamawy said.
When a news hound pressed about how "charismatic" the sheikh must have been to get Hamawy to follow him, the surgeon added, "Not just me, the entire community. He was an old man that was disabled and ... people volunteered. It was the entire community."
The sheikh was 54 in 1993.
When another news hound asked about whether Hamawy would condemn the sheikh—or the concept of "jihad"—Hamawy laughed.
"Any extremism [of] any kind is bad," he said, referring to his service as a military doctor. "I'm against all war and all violence."
He refused to specifically condemn the sheikh or Islamic jihad, instead saying, "I condemn all extremism and all violence of any kind."
At one point a Hamawy handler tried to shut down the terrorism talk—but the surgeon was in a chatty mood.
"As a Moslem they're always going to find something to attack," Hamawy said. "I'm used to this all my life."
Video of the encounter was posted to YouTube by Insider NJ.
Hamawy's comments about Abdel-Rahman today fly in the face of his own testimony that he offered on the sheikh's behalf during a sensational 1995 trial, when Abdel-Rahman was accused of plotting the World Trade Center bombing.
Under questioning from prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald (who is now representing James
The spine of the FBI is the rule of lawComey
The disgraced, except in his own mind, former head of the FBI...), Hamawy testified that Abdel-Rahman "always talked about" jihad.
Related:
Omar Abdel-Rahman 02/21/2017 The death of the father of terrorism
Omar Abdel-Rahman 02/18/2017 Breaking: Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman Dies in Prison
Omar Abdel-Rahman 09/22/2016 The recent NYC bombing and Ray Kelly's Vindication
Omar Abdel-Rahman 02/21/2017 The death of the father of terrorism
Omar Abdel-Rahman 02/18/2017 Breaking: Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman Dies in Prison
Omar Abdel-Rahman 09/22/2016 The recent NYC bombing and Ray Kelly's Vindication