© ReutersOmar Abdel-Rahman
Omar Abdel-Rahman, 78, died of natural causes at the Butner Federal Correctional Facility's Medical Center where he had been incarcerated for nearly 10 years.
Abdel-Rahman's son Ammar confirmed the death to Reuters, saying he was contacted by a US representative. The cleric's daughter Asmaa tweeted about her father's passing.
Blinded as a young child and a long-term wheelchair user, Omar Abdel-Rahman gained notoriety for his role in the 1993 Trade Center bombings in New York that killed six people and injured thousands when a 1,200 pound truck bomb exploded in a tower basement.
He was also charged with planning other US attacks, including one on the United Nations headquarters and Lincoln and Holland tunnels in New York.
A member of the Egyptian Islamist militant group Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, Abdel Rahman was also suspected of being involved in Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat's assassination in 1981.
After a stint in Afghanistan, where he became associated with the Maktab al-Khadamat (MAK) group and befriended Osama bin Laden, he moved to the United States in 1990, where he preached in mosques in New York and New Jersey.
In 1995, he was convicted of conspiring to "levy a war of urban terrorism against the United States," including the attack on the World Trade Center, and was sentenced to life in prison.
The CIA facilitates his entry into the US and soon after he is identified as the ring leader behind a (the first?) so-called terrorist attack on US soil ... and ends up with a sentence of "life plus 10 years"
If this story was to occur today, I would not believe a word of what I was being told
Notes from Wiki
07/1990 - Entered US on tourist visa - despite his name being listed on a U.S. State Department terrorist watch list.
11/1990 - State Department revoked his tourist visa on
04/1991 - Obtained a green card from the Immigration and Naturalization Service office in Newark, New Jersey.
08/1991 - On re-entry to US ....Officials began the procedure to revoke his permanent resident status, but still allowed entry
03/1992 - Green card revoked - Political asylum requested
01/1993 - Asylum hearing
Was given most of his visa approvals by the CIA - Egyptian officials have testified that the CIA was actively assisting him in entering the US
After bombing in 02/1993 FBI began to investigate Abdel-Rahman and his followers more closely