Spain on Tuesday allowed a US extradition request for alleged Hamas donor James Cox Chambers to proceed to court, despite protests from the government’s left-wing coalition partners who argue the case is politically motivated.

The case is politically sensitive for Spain’s Socialist-led government, whose pro-Palestinian stance has drawn rebuke from the Trump administration and contributed to wider tensions with Washington.

Chambers, 41, an American multimillionaire media heir known as Fergie, was arrested at the request of US authorities on July 10 while on holiday in Ibiza. He is currently in pre-trial detention in Madrid.

A self-described anti-imperialist and communist, Chambers has called in interviews and on social media for the destruction of the United States. He received $250 million after divesting from his family’s media conglomerate, Cox Enterprises, in 2023, his spokesperson said.

The US wants Chambers for, among other charges, allegedly sending $7.5 million from the US to a Tunisian bank account several years ago when he lived in that country, according to the UK’s Guardian newspaper, which cited Chambers’s legal representative. The money was allegedly then used to support Hamas.

The Guardian also noted that a week after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, Chambers posted to X, “No faction of the Palestinian resistance, Hamas or other, has done *anything* wrong.”

Chambers has........

© The Times of Israel