MADRID (The Thursday Times) — Spain’s National Court is expected to decide next week whether to send James “Fergie” Chambers, an heir to the Cox Enterprises fortune, to the United States, after a hearing in which the pro-Palestinian activist denied that money he moved abroad was meant to help Hamas.
Chambers, a US citizen, has been held since July, when he was arrested on the island of Ibiza on a US request circulated through an Interpol Red Notice. US prosecutors have charged him with international money laundering, riot, and conspiracy to riot. They allege that after leaving the United States in 2023 he transferred about $7.5 million out of the country with the intent of supporting Hamas. He has not been charged with any terrorism offence. If convicted on the money-laundering charge, he faces up to 20 years in prison.
His case is believed to be the first in which Washington has sought a citizen’s extradition over alleged support for Hamas.
At Friday’s two-hour hearing in Madrid, Chambers told the three-judge panel that he did not consent to being handed over. He said his wealth came from selling his shares in the family conglomerate in 2023, a stake reported to be worth about $250 million, and that a foundation he set up checked that no grant went to any group under US sanctions.
He said the transfers to Tunisia, where he was living at the time, mostly went to sponsor Club Africain, one of the country’s biggest football clubs, which was deep in debt, through a sports company he set up in Tunis. The sponsorship deal was worth €4 million over four years, he said. A financial expert called by the defence gave evidence on the ten transfers.
Asked why his giving to Palestinian causes had grown, Chambers said his foundation had focused on “the most pertinent issue of the moment”, and that since 2023 that had meant Gaza, “particularly toward medical treatment for children and access to shelter, transportation out of dangerous zones, food and water”. He called it “the prevailing moral question of our time”.
The riot charges relate to 2023 protests at sites of Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons maker, in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Chambers said he had locked himself to a door with a bicycle lock, joined a march to block access to another site, and paid bail for arrested protesters, something he said he had also done after the protests over George Floyd’s death. He said his part had been non-violent.
The prosecutor, Juan Hernández Villalba, stood by his written opinion that the conditions for extradition were met. He told the judges that the defence had picked the allegations apart one by one, but that “what matters is the overall assessment”, and argued that the facts showed “a stable structure aimed at unlawful actions” alongside money moved to support terrorist groups. In his earlier report he had matched the US allegations to Spanish offences including terrorism financing.
Chambers’s lawyers say that goes further than Washington does. “The US administration has not charged Fergie with material support for or financing terrorism or any terror-related offences,” said Aitor Martínez, one of his lawyers. The defence also says the Spanish translation of the US request made the case sound worse, turning “direct action” into “direct violence” and the “activation” of smoke canisters into a “detonation”, and adding a reference to fires that is not in the original complaint.
His wife, the actor Stella Schnabel, has asked Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to speed up the claim for political asylum that Chambers lodged after his arrest. He cannot be extradited while that claim is pending. “If [Sánchez] chooses not to act, he risks enabling [President Donald] Trump to establish a precedent in Spain and across Europe which criminalises solidarity with the Palestinian people,” she said.
If the court approves the request, the defence plans to appeal, and Spain’s council of ministers has the final say. That could make the case one of the last decisions taken by Sánchez’s government before the general election on 29 November.
