Omar Ahmad Ali Abdel-Rahman, Blind Sheik
Omar Adbel Rahman, the former leader of the Egyptian
terrorist organization, Gama'a al-Islamiyya, is currently serving life plus 65
years at the Supermax penitentiary in Florence, Colorado for seditious
conspiracy, solitication and conspiracy to murder Egyptian President Hosni
Mubarak, solicitation to attack a military installation, and bombing
conspiracy. Some of these crimes related to a plot to bomb the New York FBI
headquarters, the United Nations building, the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, the
George Washington Bridge, and military installations. Click here to see the
indictment.
Omar Abdel Rahman was born in Egypt in 1938. After
boarding school, he attended Al Azar University in Cairo. After he graduated in
1965, he took up a post as an imam in a town outside of Cairo. He became known
for promoting the takfir ideology. This extremist ideology prescribes
identifying Muslims who violate strict Islamic principles as apostates who
deserve death. After criticizing Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, Rahman
was imprisoned for eight months.
Upon his release, he moved to Saudi Arabia for a few
years where he developed a valuable network of contacts that supported the
militant strain of Islam he promoted. When he returned to Egypt, he became
known for writing fatwas that supported the actions of terrorists and some of
his followers assassinated Egyptian Presdient Anwar Sadat, but Rahman himself
was acquited due to a lack of evidence of organizational ties between himself and
the assassins.
In the 1980s, he became involved in supporting the cause
of jihad in Afghanistan against the Soviets and met with Abdullah Azzam, Osama
bin Laden's mentor, in Pakistan. In 1990, Rahman moved to New York City, where
he began recruiting aspiring jihadists to plan a campaign of attacks in the
United States.
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