The Al Qaeda Factor: Plots Against the West

Chapter 11: Tradebom Plot (World Trade Center, New York, 1993)

C h a p t e r 1 1 Tradebom Plot (World Trade Center, New York, 1993) the 1993 world trade center bombing occurred on February 26, 1993, when a car bomb was detonated below Tower One of the World Trade Center in New York City. The 1,500-pound urea nitrate-hydrogen gas-enhanced device was intended to knock the North Tower (Tower One) into the South Tower (Tower Two), bringing both towers down and killing thousands of people. It failed to do so, but it did kill six people and injure 1,042. The attack was planned by a group of conspirators including Ramzi Yousef, Mahmoud Abouhalima, Mohammed Salameh, Nidal Ayyad, Abdul Rahman Yasin, and Ahmad Ajaj. They received financing from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Yousef’s uncle. In March 1994, four men were convicted of carrying out the bombing: Abouhalima, Ajaj, Ayyad, and Salameh. The charges included conspiracy, explosive destruction of property, and interstate transportation of explosives. In November 1997, two more were convicted: Yousef, the mastermind behind the bombings, and Eyad Ismoil, who drove the truck carrying the bomb.1 The al Kifah Scene The origins of the development of the rejectionist Islamic environment in New York can be traced back to the establishment of the al Kifah Brooklyn refugee center, which was a branch of the Office of Services, the Pakistan-based organization that Osama bin Laden helped finance and lead and would later 170 Al Qaeda“Inspired”Plots become al Qaeda. In fact, it was Mustafa Shalabi, an Egyptian who founded and ran the center, whom bin Laden called in 1991 when he needed help moving to Sudan. Shalabi was murdered in 1991 in a case that remains unsolved but took place at a time when the “Blind Sheikh,” Omar Abdel Rahman, and Shalabi were quarreling over how funds were raised and spent.2 The al Kifah Center, on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, began in the late 1980s as a desk in the al Farouq Mosque and subsequently moved into a “small apartment in a building a few doors away at 566 Atlantic Avenue, above what is now a perfume factory, with just enough room for a desk, a few chairs, a phone and a fax machine.” Its location placed it right in the middle of “a strip of Arab restaurants and Islamic bookstores on Atlantic Avenue, between Third and Fourth Streets,” which was a neighborhood that comprising immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa.3 The center’s stated purpose was to raise money and recruit fighters to help the U.S.-backed Afghan mujahedeen, who rebelled against the communist government in Afghanistan after an invasion by the Soviet Union in 1979, and during the late 1980s it served as a conduit to Afghanistan for local volunteers who wanted to fight alongside the Afghan mujahedeen as well as a fund-raising network and propaganda arm. However, following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, it changed its focus from Afghanistan and instead became a local hub of radical Islamic activity directed against the West and was a primary node linked to individuals convicted in connection with the 1990 murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane, the 1993 World Trade Center attack, and the 1993 “Landmarks Plot.”4 The arrival in Brooklyn in 1990 of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric who had been a leading member of al Jemaah Islamiyah, or the Egyptian Islamic Group, and was accused of issuing the fatwa that authorized the assassination of Anwar Sadat, figured prominently in the redirection of al Kifah against the West. At al Kifah, Rahman “preached the message of Sayyid Qutb’s Milestones, characterizing the United States as the oppressor of Muslims worldwide and asserting that it was their religious duty to fight against God’s enemies.” This rejectionist message had a powerful impact among those who were regulars at al Kifah and al Farouq. Among the convicted members of the Tradebom cluster who frequented and were radicalized at al Kifah and al Farouq were Mohammed Salameh, Mahmoud Abouhalima, and Nidal Ayyad. By the time Ramzi Yousef arrived with his plot in 1992, these men were prepared to strike out against the power that they viewed as a primary moral violator of Muslims worldwide—the United States.5 Tradebom Plot (WorldTrade Center, NewYork, 1993) 171 Gravitating to Reactionary Islam Sayyid Qutb’s Milestones and the religious/political ideology promoted by al Jemaah...