Wednesday 8 August 2012

Planning of the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing

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Ramzi Yousef who was born as Abdul Basit Mahmoud Abdul Karim in Kuwait spent time at an Al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan before starting to plan a bombing attack within the United States of America in 1991. His uncle Khalid Shaikh Mohammed who is now considered the principal architect of the September 11 attacks in 2001 gave him advice and tips about making the bomb over the phone, his uncle also funded him with a $1,400 wire transfer. On September 1st 1992 Ramzi Yousef arrived illegally in the United States with his co conspirator Ahmed Ajaj from Pakistan. Ajaj tried to enter the country with a fake swedish passport but failed because it had been altered and when officials at John F. Kennedy International Airport put Ajaj through secondary inspection  they found bomb making instructions and other materials in his luggage, after that they arrested him. Yousef tried to enter with a fake Iraqi passport and tried to claim political asylum, he was allowed into the United States but was given a hearing date. Yousef set up residence on Nicole Pickett Avenue in Jersey City, New Jersey after that he traveled arround New York and New Jersey, then called a a blind Sheikh called Omar Abdel Rahman via cellphone. After being introduced to his fellow conspirators by Abdel Rahman at the Al-Farooq Mosque in Brooklyn New York hec stated making the 680kg urea nitrate–hydrogen gas enhanced bomb that he would use to attack the North Tower in the hope of nocking over the South Tower killing thousands of people.

Ramzi Yousef's view of the Attack

Steve Coll a journalest said that Ramzi Yousef had mailed letters to various New York newspapers right before his attack on the world trade center, in the letter he said he was a belonged to 'Liberation Army, Fifth Battalion', he made three demands in these letters: an end to all US aid to Israel, an end to US diplomatic relations with Israel, and a pledge by the United States to end interference "with any of the Middle East countries' interior affairs." Yousef said that if his demands were not met the attack on the World Trade Center would just be the first of such attacks, he tried to justifie the attack by saying "the terrorism that Israel practices (which America supports) must be faced with a similar one."

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