Blind fundamentalist cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman dies
while serving a life sentence over his plots for a "war of urban
terrorism".
An extremist cleric who is believed to have
masterminded the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center has died in jail.
Blind sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman was jailed for life
for conspiring with those who carried out the New York City bombing, which
killed six people and injured more than 1,000 others.
He was also convicted of planning more attacks on
New York City landmarks, including the United Nations and several bridges and
tunnels, as part of a "war of urban terrorism".
Authorities said the 78-year-old died in a North
Carolina prison after a long battle with diabetes and coronary artery disease.
Before emigrating to the US in 1990, Abdel-Rahman
led the militant Al-Gamaa al-Islamiya group in Egypt.
He was accused of issuing a fatwa which led to the
assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1986, but was eventually
acquitted.
A year after arriving in New York City, Abdel-Rahman
was given permanent US resident status and began preaching in Brooklyn and New
Jersey.
The fundamentalist cleric's followers were linked to
terror attacks across the world, including the 1990 assassination of Rabbi Meir
Kahane in New York and the 1992 killing of a writer in Egypt.
Following a nine-month trial in 1995, Abdel-Rahman
was found guilty on 48 of 50 charges - which included plots to kill Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak, a Jewish New York state legislator and a Jewish New
York State Supreme Court justice.
During a sentencing hearing, the cleric gave a
90-minute speech in which he claimed he had not "committed any crime
except telling people about Islam".
A year before his followers killed 2,996 people in
the September 11 attacks, Osama bin Laden pledged a jihad to free Abdel-Rahman
from jail.
In 2012, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi called for
the cleric to be sent home in a prisoner exchange with the US for
"humanitarian reasons".
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