Omar Abdel Rahman, Blind Cleric Found Guilty of Plot to Wage ‘War of Urban Terrorism,’ Dies at 78<br />18, 2017<br />Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Islamic cleric whose fulminating sermons inspired violent fundamentalist movements in Egypt and, an American court found,<br />a 1993 plot for a bombing rampage in New York, died on Saturday at a federal prison near Raleigh, N.C., where he was serving a life sentence.<br />Those bombings never happened, but the intent of the conspiracy, prosecutors said, was to destroy New York landmarks, kill hundreds of people<br />and force the United States to abandon its support for Israel and Egypt.<br />In 1990, as he fled from Egypt, Mr. Abdel Rahman moved to the United States, bringing his anti-American preaching<br />and his campaign against the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, to mosques in Brooklyn and Jersey City.<br />They depicted the bombing as part of a plot that included the killing of a militant rabbi in 1990 and the conspiracy to blow up New York landmarks.<br />On July 18, 1990, he traveled to New York, carrying a visa granted by the United States consulate in Sudan.<br />Before coming to the United States, Mr. Abdel Rahman was put on trial in Egypt.<br />In Mr. Abdel Rahman’s trial, prosecutors described the World Trade Center attack as part of a broader conspiracy involving the blind cleric.
