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IPFS News Link • 911 / World Trade Center

Omar Abdel Rahman, Blind Cleric Found Guilty of Plot to Wage 'War of Urban Terrorism,' Dies

• https://www.nytimes.com, By JULIA PRESTON

Greg Norton, a spokesman for the prison, the Butner Federal Correctional Complex, confirmed the death, saying the cause was complications of diabetes and coronary artery disease.

Born to a humble merchant in a Nile Delta village and blind from infancy, Mr. Abdel Rahman became one of the most influential and fearsome theologians of the Islamist fundamentalism that swept the Middle East in recent decades.

On Oct. 1, 1995, Mr. Abdel Rahman was convicted, along with nine other defendants, on sedition charges in Federal District Court in Manhattan. He was found guilty of guiding a conspiracy to wage "a war of urban terrorism," with the ultimate aim of carrying out a day of bombings against the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels, the George Washington Bridge, the United Nations and the Manhattan headquarters of the F.B.I.


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