Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman is a blind Egyptian Muslim cleric who at one time resided in New York City.

Rahman and nine others were convicted on October 1, 1995. Their case was prosecuted by the high-profile Patrick Fitzgerald. They were convicted not of the World Trade Center bombing, which resulted in six dead and more than one thousand injured, but of conspiring to bomb New York landmarks including the United Nations and FBI offices.

Rahman is the spiritual leader of Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya (also known as The Islamic Group), a terrorist organization in Egypt, most widely known for the attack in November 1997 at Luxor that killed 58 foreign tourists..

Prison in Egypt

In 1982, Rahman spent three years in Egyptian prisons, where he was severely tortured as he awaited trial on charges of issuing a fatwa resulting in the assassination of President Anwar Sadat.

Mujaheddin

Rahman was close friends with Afghan warlord Hekmatyar and heavily involved with and the CIA and ISI efforts to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan. He became famous traveling all over the world for five years recruiting new mujaheddin. But he never hid his prime goals, which were to overthrow the governments of the US and Egypt.

Move to the US

Rahman entered the United States, in July of 1990, via Saudi Arabia, Peshawar, and Sudan on a much-disputed tourist visa issued by an undercover agent of the CIA. The US hosted Omar Abdel Rahman for services he rendered to it in Afghanistan. As one FBI agent says in 1993, "It was no accident that the sheikh got a visa and that he's still in the country. He's here under the banner of national security, the State Department, the NSA, and the CIA.”[1] (http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/1990s/villagevoice033093.html) President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt: "the Americans harboured Abdel Rahman because he helped them in the face of the Soviet invasion." Mubarak added that he warned the Americans of trusting such a person and noted that he expected that Abdel Rahman would make the American pay a "costly price" for hosting him. [2] (http://www.sis.gov.eg/online/html4/m220921.htm)

Rahman has been linked to the murder of Meir Kahane. Kahane was assassinated in 1990 after giving a speech at a New York City hotel, by El Sayyid Nosair from Egypt. Nosair was part of a terrorist cell involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

External links

• The CIA and the Sheik (http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/1990s/villagevoice033093.html) Village Voice article
• Blowback (http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/96may/blowback.htm) The Atlantic article