July 10. A foreign couple intending to settle in Ibiza drives along a rural road in the north of the island. They are looking for a school for their son and that day they are heading to visit one. He is James, Fergie, Chambers, who inherited a fortune from one of the richest families in the US, the owners of the Cox group (focused on telecommunications), which bills 20 billion dollars a year. He is 41 years old, a pro-Palestinian activist, and has defined himself as a Marxist-Leninist and revolutionary. She is Stella Schnabel, actress, producer, and daughter of the filmmaker who directed, among others, Before Night Falls, the film that earned Javier Bardem an Oscar nomination in 2001. “Suddenly,” Stella Schnabel recounts to EL PAÍS in a hotel in Madrid, “five cars appeared: three in front and two behind. They had no police insignia. Three women and three men got out. They said they were agents of the National Police and that they had to arrest Fergie on a money laundering charge. They took him away immediately. I was totally in shock, although with the political climate in the United States, that was something that was always on my mind.”
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It is the US authorities who are requesting him. The Interpol international arrest warrant, accessed by EL PAÍS, specifies that Chambers is accused of three crimes: money laundering, riots, and conspiracy to riot [which does not exist as such in Spanish law], punishable in the US with up to 30 years in prison in total. The warrant briefly mentions his alleged financial support to organizations in Gaza that could be linked to Hamas.
EL PAÍS asked Chambers, through his wife, which groups he had supported in Palestine. From prison, the activist sends the following response: “I am not Palestinian and I have no control over who they vote for. I am a human rights defender and that is why I will always offer my moral support to people who fight for their lives, for the lives of their children, and for freedom. Whether it is the ANC in South Africa [Nelson Mandela’s historic party]; the FLN in Algeria [the party that led the country’s independence], the united European forces against Hitler in the 1940s, or any anti-colonial struggle. I will always support those people and their rights.”
According to current legislation in Spain, the country led by Donald Trump has until approximately August 26 (40 to 45 days, depending on whether it is governed by the treaty or by extradition law) to send the documentation supporting the request for Spain to hand over Chambers to be tried by a court in the United States. And in that impasse are the activist and his family: waiting to have the formal extradition request and trusting that the Spanish authorities conclude, upon seeing it, that behind the accusation there is a political motivation — one of the arguments that allows halting the delivery — and that the procedure is stopped.
Once the request passes the review phase in the National Court and if it succeeds, the final word corresponds to the Council of Ministers, according to extradition law. The next meeting will be on September 25. Pedro Sánchez’s government will have to decide whether to accept the US extradition request at a time when relations with the US administration are especially tense. The White House has openly criticized Spain for the migration crisis in Ceuta after the entry of at least 70,000 people. Just a few days ago, Trump declared that the Spanish were “a lost cause” and that he did not want to make any trade deal with the country due to the delay in increasing its military spending and its refusal to allow the use of the Rota and Morón military bases in Cádiz for the supply of planes participating in the Iran war, although he later assured that the government had “redeemed itself” by committing to “a significant payment”; and the firm stance of Pedro Sánchez’s government regarding the massacre in Gaza and in leading the recognition of Palestine as a state has provoked angry reactions from Israel’s main ally and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
For Chambers’ wife and his lawyers, led by former National Court judge Baltasar Garzón, there is no doubt that the international arrest warrant for Chambers is due to a “political persecution” by the US because of his support for the Palestinian cause and his activism against the Israeli “genocide.” “They can make up anything. Right now in the US there is a new witch hunt. It’s very scary,” laments Schnabel.
The US president has sanctioned eight judges and three prosecutors of the International Criminal Court for carrying out investigations related to the US and Israel. One of the sanctioned, Ugandan appeals judge Solomy Balungi Bossa, said in a recent interview with EL PAÍS: “For Trump, we are like terrorists or drug traffickers.” The sanctions, she added, “are an attempt at coercion” to hinder the investigation of war crimes or crimes against humanity. Baltasar Garzón’s office frames Chambers’ arrest warrant in that context and recalls that the US has also sanctioned the UN rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese. The US State Department accuses her of “antisemitism” and supporting “terrorism.” The Spanish government will have to decide, once it receives Chambers’ extradition request, whether one of the world’s first democracies commits acts of “political persecution” that prevent trying one of its citizens, now imprisoned in Aranjuez, with all guarantees.
Pending the more detailed exposition that must appear, once sent, in the extradition request, according to the Interpol file Chambers is accused of “money laundering” related to a transfer that the US considers suspicious for a total of 7.5 million dollars (about 6.5 million euros) to Tunisia, the country where the activist lived before deciding to move to Ibiza with his wife. “I have family in Spain,” explains Schnabel. “In fact, my middle name is Madrid. My father gave it to me after a racehorse.”
Chambers’ wife explains that those transfers “were not an investment.” “He gave that money to pay the debts and salaries of the players of a football team, Club Africain, which there is the team of the working people, like Rayo Vallecano here. In Tunisia, we rented the house of a man who had been the club’s president and I became very good friends with his daughter. One day we went to see a match and Fergie immediately fell in love upon seeing the enthusiasm of the fans and their support for Palestine. The stadium was full of giant banners supporting the Palestinians. Fergie, who has always been obsessed with sports, saved the team from ruin.” Chambers has a sports representation and sponsorship company, Jii Sports.
One million dollars for Palestine
Chambers also donated, according to his lawyers, nearly one million dollars (about 865,000 euros) to “humanitarian projects and actions” in Gaza previously supervised by the technical council of his foundation. Thus, they specify that 550,000 dollars went to the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA), which “provides food, medicine, sanitary material, clothing, books, toys to displaced families from Gaza and Lebanon”; another 370,000 dollars to the Sameer Project or TSP, which finances small businesses, such as bakeries; 300,000 dollars to the People’s Health Movement (PHM), which raises funds to rebuild health care centers and bring equipment and medicine to Gaza; 200,000 dollars to the Ghasan Abu Sittah Childhood Fund, which assists injured children; and 100,000 dollars to the Zaynab Project, which provides psychological support to war victims.
“All those donations,” explains Schnabel, “can be verified. Fergie sent the money that allowed setting up a bakery that now makes 2,000 loaves of bread a week; helped a girl who needed dialysis; orphans…”
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Asked if she can assure that her husband has not financed Hamas in any way, she answers: “Absolutely. And it is very painful to hear that. This was humanitarian aid and we can prove where each donation went. I come from a family of Jewish origin.” Her father, film director Julian Schnabel, rejected the boycott of actors Gal Gadot and Gerard Butler at the past Venice festival for having supported Israel.
Several international media report old statements by Chambers defending Hamas after the October 7, 2023 attacks in Israel in which 1,200 people died, specifically a tweet that says “No faction of the Palestinian resistance, Hamas or others, has done anything wrong.” Schnabel closed her husband’s social media accounts to the public and says she does not remember that message, but insists that the money has not gone to terrorist groups.
Chambers’ activism has led him to support in various ways the group Palestine Action, born in England in 2020 with the goal of carrying out “disruptive actions” and whose main target is the facilities of Elbit Systems, a military technology company whose main client is the Israeli army. In an interview released in 2025, Chambers admitted to having participated in one of those actions — “I chained myself to the door.”
Last June, four members of this organization were sentenced in the United Kingdom to sentences ranging from four to almost eight years in prison for destroying several drones in their assault on the Israeli company. Amnesty International criticized in a statement that the British justice system introduced a “terrorist connection” in the trial of the activists: “They have been convicted as terrorists because they want to set a precedent. Damage crimes had never before been treated as terrorism.”
Another action by this group against the Israeli company took place in Merrimack (New Hampshire) in November 2023. While several protesters held a banner outside, others spray-painted the building and climbed onto the roof with smoke bombs. Chambers was interviewed on site by a local news channel. Four women were arrested. The sentence was finally 60 days in jail and a restraining order from the company.
Schnabel explains that her husband has been “financially supporting” some of those activists, but that he cannot be described as a “coordinator” of those actions because “the group organizes spontaneously online.” Baltasar Garzón’s office believes that the accusations of “riots” and “conspiracy to riot” briefly cited in the arrest warrant may be related to Chambers’ support for Palestine Action.
This is not the first time Chambers has had problems with the authorities, although never before had they been of this magnitude. As Schnabel recalls and he himself told in 2024 in an interview with Rolling Stone, shortly before leaving his country and moving to Tunisia, he was arrested in Atlanta for getting involved in a protest against the cutting down of an urban forest to build a police training field instead, Cop City. The project was close to him, as the person in charge of raising funds for its construction was the CEO of Cox Enterprises, his cousin Alex Taylor. He was also arrested for vandalizing a McDonald’s in a pro-Palestine demonstration in Washington DC.
Chambers has donated considerable sums to organizations such as the Black Alliance for Peace or the Abolitionist Legal Center. He also created a “socialist commune” in Massachusetts. He is an immensely wealthy person, whose main contradiction — pointed out by his critics — is his apparent commitment to dismantling the system that allowed people like him or families like his to accumulate such wealth. His father, James Cox Chambers, whom the activist once defined as “the family’s first black sheep,” is dedicated to film and promoting renewable energies. He is also, according to Schnabel, “one of the main donors to the Democratic Party in the US.” In 2004 he married Nabila Khashoggi, daughter of Adnan, an arms dealer who died in 2017.
The activist traveled to Donbas in 2022 to talk about supporters of the Russian presence in the area. His first wife is Russian and he speaks the language. Schnabel insists that many of her husband’s statements “have been taken out of context.” “Fergie speaks very directly and confronts the ruling elite and the ruling elite does not like that. He grew up surrounded by millions of dollars and most rich people now are far-right and they don’t understand him. But the only thing he does is help, with no personal interest. His foundation doesn’t even bear his name.”
In Rolling Stone, Chambers explained that his mother took him to a psychiatrist for the first time when he was six years old and that at 12 he was admitted to a hospital where another patient raped him. “He is a very strong man, who has lived through many things. Now he is very worried,” his wife recounts, who visited him on August 4 at the Aranjuez prison. “He only wants me to bring him books: he asked me for one by Gramsci and I brought him El Aleph, by Borges, some fantasy.”
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