James ‘Fergie’ Chambers at home in Tunis, Tunisia, on 8 February 2024.

Photograph: Chedly Ben Ibrahim/NurPhoto via Getty Images James ‘Fergie’ Chambers, in prison in Spain, has applied for asylum as US seeks extradition over alleged Hamas support US authorities seized wealthy activist James “Fergie” Chambers’s cellphone at some point after Spanish police arrested him in July without notifying him or his attorneys, the Guardian has learned.

Chambers, a US citizen and wealthy donor to leftwing and humanitarian projects, is imprisoned in Madrid. His case is the first known instance of the US seeking to extradite a citizen over alleged support for Hamas, an accusation tied to money Chambers has donated to support Palestinians, including the Sameer Project in Gaza.

The extradition request also includes charges associated with a protest against Elbit Systems, an Israeli weapons manufacturer.

Chambers’s legal team discovered that the phone was no longer in the custody of the national court in Madrid and had been turned over to the upon inquiring about it Tuesday, according to attorney Aitor Martínez.

This occurred despite the team having received written guarantees from the court that the phone “would remain under the court’s custody while the extradition request was resolved” – as both Spanish law and the extradition treaty between the two countries require, Martínez said.

“I’ve never seen anything like this in an extradition case,” he said. “Spanish judicial authorities can’t surrender control over the personal effects of a person sought in extradition just because a foreign government has asked for them … and now a judge has secretly turned over Fergie’s phone to the US.”The defense has filed a petition with an appeals court seeking immediate return of the phone – as well as a detailed explanation of the phone’s chain of custody, who authorized what and when and whether or not the US had accessed the phone’s contents.

It is assumed the office of Félix Bolaños, the Spanish minister of justice, would have to get involved in bringing the phone back, Martínez said.

Chambers has asserted through his attorneys and partner, the actor and activist Stella Schnabel, that the extradition is politically motivated. He has applied for political asylum from prison. Under Spanish law, an asylum applicant cannot be extradited until the asylum process is completed.

He remains imprisoned after a judge denied a petition for provisional release earlier this month, asserting in part that his wealth made him a flight risk.

Chambers, a self-described communist and anti-imperialist, is heir of the Cox family, owners of Atlanta-based Cox Communications. As part of a settlement in which his family severed ties with him at the time, he sold stock back to his family worth about $250m in mid-2023. Since then, he has been funding an estimated 100 projects in 20 countries, according to Schnabel.

Chambers’s views and donations have been extensively profiled in US media, and his public comments on Israel and Gaza have brought controversy. A week after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel, he 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.”His legal team is now asserting that various Spanish and international laws governing both extradition and political asylum have been violated by US authorities seizing his the phone without legal due process.

The Spanish courts are handling the extradition case and could take months to decide whether to hand Chambers over to the US. Meanwhile, Martínez noted, a 1970 treaty between the two countries stipulates that the possessions of a person sought in extradition can only be released to the requesting country – in this case, the United States – if and when extradition has been granted.

As for the political asylum claim, “Chambers’s status as an asylum applicant means the court can’t ignore its obligations to protect him, or give information about him to the country alleged to be persecuting him,” Martínez said.

Schnabel told the Guardian she retrieved Chambers’s personal effects last month at the prison where he is detained, including keys and identification. It is unclear whether Spain had already surrendered his phone to the US by then; Martínez said that the judge assured him on 20 July that the phone was in the court’s custody.

“I’m not surprised,” said Schnabel, referring to the apparent suspension of due process driven by the FBI’s request. “It’s exactly in line with this administration not following the rules of the legal system.”