Gaza

Madrid, Spain – A wealthy American donor to Palestinian causes who faces extradition from Spain to the United States over alleged financial support of Hamas is a victim of “political persecution”, his wife and lawyers have told Al Jazeera.

James “Fergie” Chambers was arrested on the Spanish island of Ibiza in July while searching for a school for his son with his wife, actress Stella Schnabel.

US authorities have linked Chambers to the transfer of $7.5m to Tunisia and allege that the funds were ultimately used to provide financial support to the Palestinian armed group Hamas.

The indictment remains sealed, so the specific allegations against Chambers – who denies wrongdoing – are not yet known.

Chambers, heir to one of the richest families in the US, has supported a handful of humanitarian projects in Gaza with funds totalling more than $1m, a member of his legal team said shortly after his arrest.

The extradition effort is believed to be the first of its kind involving a US citizen accused of providing support to Hamas.

Chambers, who describes himself as a Marxist-Leninist, has been held in a Madrid jail for six weeks as Spanish authorities consider the US extradition request.

Schnabel, who is also an activist, said she was driving through the Balearic island of Ibiza with her husband to search for a school for their five-year-old son, as they were moving from Ireland to Spain, when he was arrested.

“Suddenly, several unmarked cars cut us off. Police officers got out of the cars and told us to get out of the car. I got out my phone, and they told me not to phone,” she told Al Jazeera. “They handcuffed Fergie. We said we loved each other, and he said, ‘Tell the kids I love them’. And they bundled him into a car, and he was gone. That was July 10. Over six weeks ago.”

Schnabel said US President Donald Trump’s administration was targeting her husband for being one of the largest donors to humanitarian projects in Gaza. This included supplying bread, water and medical care.

“He should be at home with his family, continuing his humanitarian work. Instead, he is facing political persecution because he has stood with the Palestinian people,” she said. “This sets a terrifying precedent for repression of the wider movement for a free Palestine, including precedent for the Trump administration exporting its repression far beyond the US borders to target the people of Europe.”

The US Department of Justice declined to comment when contacted by Al Jazeera.

The US sent the indictment and documentation to Spain last week, in time to meet the 45-day deadline after Chambers’s arrest in July.

Al Jazeera understands that the indictment is still sealed and has not been revealed to his defence team.

Spanish authorities must now assess the US request. Among the issues they may consider is whether the extradition would amount to political persecution, a circumstance that could provide grounds for refusing it.

Chambers comes from the family behind Atlanta-based Cox Communications. In 2023, he reached an agreement with his relatives under which his stake in the family business was bought back for approximately $250m, following a break with the family.

Since then, he has been funding dozens of projects in 20 countries, Schnabel has said.

On the central allegation about funding Hamas, Schnabel said this was a “trumped-up charge” for which the US has not provided a “shred of evidence”.

“My understanding is that the US appears to rely on the fact that he transferred $7.5m of his own funds from the US to Tunisia. The reality is that this money was transferred to Tunisia because we were living there, and for philanthropic activities, including supporting Club Africain [a football team],” Schnabel said.

“The money sponsored the club, helped to pay its debts and overdue salaries, rebuild its training centre and develop football fields for young people.”

The Tunisian side secured the league title in May.

Lawyers for Chambers have also pointed to his outspoken views on Israel and its genocidal war on Gaza.

In the week after the October 2023 Hamas-led attacks on Israel, Chambers posted on X about Israel’s response: “Stop calling it ‘collective punishment’. There’s nothing to be ‘punished’ for. No faction of the Palestinian resistance, Hamas or other, has done anything wrong. It’s simply genocide. Like it has been.”

In the wake of the 41-year-old’s arrest, FBI agents raided the rented property in Ibiza where Chambers had been staying, The Guardian reported.

Chambers is represented by Spanish human-rights lawyer Baltasar Garzon, who has argued that the case against his client is politically motivated and connected to his humanitarian work in Palestine.

“We request our client’s provisional release and to file all necessary legal actions with the courts,” he told Al Jazeera.

In 1998, Garzon sprang to international attention when he sought the extradition from London of the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. He has also acted in human rights cases in Spain and Argentina.

“We hope that Spain will not grant extradition in what we consider to be a case of political persecution based on our client’s ideas and humanitarian aid to Palestine,” he added, referring to Chambers.

US says its forces ‘successfully’ completed a wave of strikes against Iranian targets, accusing the IRGC of attempted attacks on shipping and US service members.

Dozens of Jewish artists are defending Mark Ruffalo after Paramount Skydance branded the actor’s criticisms about software company Oracle Corp. as “antisemitic tropes.”

Support for the actor comes as Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison has struggled to get its $111-billion Warner Bros. Discovery merger over the finish line amid considerable opposition.

Ruffalo has long been an irritant to Paramount as he is a leading figure in a high-profile Hollywood campaign to block the merger. In an Instagram post late last month, Ruffalo blasted Larry Ellison’s Texas-based software company Oracle for assisting with technology to help Israeli military efforts, including in Gaza — a conflict that Ruffalo and other progressive activists have opposed because of the killing of Palestinians.

In an open letter, signed by more than 150 filmmakers, academics, writers and even a few rabbis, the group denounced “the outrageous smear campaign against our respected colleague Mark Ruffalo.”

“Enough with the false and dangerous weaponization of charges of antisemitism against those who are brave enough to point out the obvious: that the assault on the Palestinian people and the assault on our liberties at home are deeply interconnected, and there is nothing antisemitic about recognizing that fact,” the group wrote.

Tuesday’s letter was signed by several high-profile filmmakers, including Joel Coen, Hannah Einbinder, Tony Kushner, Lisa Cholodenko, Ilana Glazer, Frances Fisher, Todd Haynes and Sarah Kunstler.

The group tied David Ellison’s merger ambitions to his billionaire father’s expansive network of businesses, which now include TikTok. Larry Ellison is personally guaranteeing the equity needed for Paramount to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, and the family will become controlling owners of the merged entity.

However, the Hollywood merger is stalled because of an antitrust lawsuit brought by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and 11 other Democratic state attorneys general, including from New York, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and Oregon. Paramount agreed to pause the transaction until the court case can be decided.

A trial is set for March 2 in Oakland, but Paramount has been agitating for industry leaders and politicians to pressure Bonta to force a settlement that would allow the deal to go through.

“The proposed merger of Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery is no mere combination of two huge multinational companies,” the group wrote in the letter. “Yes, it will destroy thousands upon thousands of livelihoods. Yes, it will further consolidate the oligarchic control of our media (witness the gutting of CBS News). Yes, it will strangle competition and creativity in film and television production and distribution.”

The group painted the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger as “part of a larger project of tech-driven domination, a project Larry Ellison and his partners have never been shy about trumpeting — and one they themselves have explicitly linked to their support for the ongoing depredations being visited on the people of Palestine and their silencing of critics of those horrors,” the group wrote.

Paramount declined to comment.

The merger fight has grown increasingly ugly in recent weeks after Paramount threatened to leave California if Bonta continued his court fight to unravel the deal. Paramount suggested it would pull up stakes from its Melrose Avenue film studio as soon as this fall.

Then, on Aug. 21, the company accused Ruffalo of injecting “antisemitic tropes” into the opposition campaign to thwart the industry-reshaping merger that would bring HBO, CBS News, CNN, TBS and the Warner Bros. and Paramount film and TV studios under the same roof.

Leaders of prominent Jewish organizations, including the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Anti-Defamation League, came to Paramount’s defense, blasting the Emmy-winning actor known for playing the Hulk and roles in productions for HBO.

Ruffalo defended himself, saying he was not being antisemitic. He said he was speaking out against Oracle’s use of technology to assist Israel’s military in the war in Gaza, “what we now have come to see as a genocide, which was built on an apartheid system of oppression powered by Oracle,” Ruffalo wrote in his post.

Paramount leaders have branded some of the opposition to the deal as “antisemitic.”

“Pointing out the crucial connections between what is happening in Gaza and what is happening in Hollywood is the exact opposite of antisemitism,” the group wrote in the open letter. “It is, for us, the very essence of Jewish ethical duty.”

The letter cited recent polls that reflect a majority of “American Jews now agree that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza; and four in ten even agree that these crimes amount to genocide,” the group wrote. “Do those attacking Mark Ruffalo as an antisemite seriously believe that all these American Jews are antisemites too?”

Bonta abruptly canceled settlement talks last week, but extended an olive branch to Paramount by saying he would be willing to meet with the company to discuss ways to address his antitrust concerns.