1993 New York City landmark bomb plot

The 1993 New York City landmark bomb plot was a planned attack on well-known landmark targets throughout New York City, with one goal of being to cause a distraction that would create an opportunity to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The attack was foiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation before it could be carried out.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations had a confidential informant, Emad Salem, infiltrate the group of plotters. Federal officers arrested the main suspects in June 1993, and in 1995, ten defendants, including Omar Abdel-Rahman were convicted of 48 charges related to the plot.

Conspirators

Though he would later aid the prosecution in trying the case,Siddig Ibrahim Siddig Ali, a 32 year old Sudanese immigrant, "masterminded" the plot. He later admitted to helping select some of the targets for the attacks.

He was a follower of Omar Abdel-Rahman, a blind radical Muslim sheikh. Siddig Ali and Abdel-Rahman lived next door to each other in New Jersey. One of Abdel-Rahman's other followers, El Sayyid Nosair, had been acquitted in 1991 for state-level murder charges of Meir Kahane in 1990 and was also linked to the World Trade Center bombing. These connections later became the justification for the FBI to argue that the plots were all connected, leading to a re-trial and eventual federal conviction for Nosair, as well as conviction of Abdel-Rahman as the leader of a seditious conspiracy using RICO.

According to Stratfor in 2008, the organizers had links to al-Qaeda.

Planned attacks

The conspirators planned to assassinate Mubarak in a "suicide mission" during an April visit to the United Nations headquarters in New York City. Mubarak arrived in the United States on April 4, 1993, but did not travel to New York City. The plotters believed they had an informant inside their group who leaked their plans, but in reality the FBI did not have their informant in place until late June. The plotters also discussed planting a total of 12 bombs around the city targeting Jews and Jewish organization that would be detonated simultaneously.

The group also planned to assassinate US Senator Al D'Amato and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Nosair also proposed other targets, including New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a Jewish politician, and Alvin Schlesinger, a judge who had tried him in a previous case. The plotter said that attacking the neighborhood would be similar to "hitting Israel itself."

Investigation

FBI Surveillance

The FBI had been closely monitoring the plan throughout 1992 and 1993 but intensified its investigation after the World Trade Center bombing in February 1993, which killed six people.

Arrests

On June 16, 1993, Egyptian immigrant Abdo Mohammed Haggag was charged for conspiring to assassinate Mubarak. It was revealed that the conspirators had also conducted test bombings before the World Trade Center bombing. They had also made preparations for a quick escape, which led the FBI to conclude that the suspects needed to be arrested quickly. When Nosair was arrested, a search of his apartment revealed "formulas for the construction of bombs" as well as video and audio tapes advocating the destruction of tall buildings. After the arrests were made, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey increased security on its six river crossings between New York and New Jersey, which included the three crossings targeted in the bombing plot.

Trials

The government sought RICO charges including the 1993 planned assassinations and landmark bombings, as well as the 1990 assassination of Meir Kahane. Using this strategy, the government would not need to prove that Abdel-Rahman directly ordered his followers to blow up any targets, and would also get a second chance to prosecute Nosair, this time with federal charges to avoid double jeopardy.

William Kunstler agreed to represent three of the suspects, including Abdel-Rahman and Nosair. However, Federal Judge Michael Mukasey later ruled that Abdel-Rahman and the two other suspects would have to be represented separately and that Kunstler and Ronald L. Kuby would have to choose which defendants to represent. Abdel-Rahman later offered to represent himself after the two lawyers could not agree on who would represent him. A bail hearing for one of the suspects, Clement Rodney Hampton-El, was held at the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on July 8. The court found that Salem's tapes supported only some of the charges against Hampton-El. The federal government wanted to try the suspects in New York because of the severity of the charges.

On August 25, 1993, Attorney General Janet Reno announced that she would prosecute the bombing case because of more evidence. That was a reversal from her position two months earlier, when she had said that there was insufficient evidence for prosecution. The same day, Abdel-Rahman was formally indicted in connection with three crimes: the landmark bombing plot, the World Trade Center bombing, and the 1990 assassination of Meir Kahane. The case against the defendants was prosecuted by lead prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy.

Salem ultimately testified against Abdel-Rahman and other terrorists despite earlier refusing to do so. Salem had recorded tapes in which the defendants sought to prevent Abdel-Rahman from being directly involved in the terror plot so that he would not be implicated. The defense lawyers unsuccessfully attempted to have all 13 defendants tried separately. New defense counsel were hired, and in September 1994, Judge Mukasey postponed the trial's opening date to December so that defense counsel could craft new arguments. In November 1994, Mukasey rescheduled the date to January 1995 because Abdel-Rahman had contracted pneumonia.

In February 1995, Siddig Ali pled guilty to the terror plot and also named some of the co-defendants as complicit in the plot. In 1999 Siddig Ali pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy as well as other charges and received 11 years in prison after U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White wrote a letter to Judge Michael B. Mukasey describing his extensive cooperation.

Once the trial started, Salem testified about the details of the bomb plot. In May 1995, one of the defendants, Abdo Mohammed Haggag, agreed to testify against the other 11 defendants in exchange for all his charges being dropped. Salem testified that Abdel-Rahman, during a 13-hour-long bus ride from New Jersey to Detroit, had directed him to kill Mubarak. Adam Hamawy was called by the defense and testified that he had been a passenger on that van trip and had not heard Abdel-Rahman call for the assassination of the Egyptian president. Hamawy was not charged or accused of wrong-doing.

The defense of Abdel-Rahman and several other defendants centered around a first amendment claim. His lawyers argued that the seditious conspiracy statute is an unconstitutional burden on free speech and the free exercise of religion. They argued that the statute is overbroad and unconstitutionally vague, and that the convictions violated the First Amendment because it rested solely on their political views and religious practices.

On October 1, 1995, Abdel-Rahman and nine others were convicted by a New York jury on 48 of 50 charges, including seditious conspiracy, solicitation to murder Mubarak, conspiracy to murder Mubarak, solicitation to attack a US military installation, and conspiracy to conduct bombings. Abdel-Rahman received life in prison. After the trial, Salem received a large sum of money and was put onto a witness protection program. The Sudanese government denied any role in the plot.

In 1996, the United States expelled two Sudanese diplomats, accusing them of providing the conspirators with details about the United Nations and about a planned visit by Hosni Mubarak to New York City in 1993. The United States pressed for diplomatic sanctions and a ban on airline flights to Sudan, but received insufficient support from the United Nations Security Council for economic or military sanctions for lack of sufficient support. By 1996, the United States still had not provided any evidence for a connection.

Domestic investigations

Up until the September 11 terrorist attacks, the handling of the NYC landmark bomb plot was the typical way for the FBI to investigate terror plots, namely using informants and wiretaps, sometimes for years, before making any arrests. As the Washington Post reported in 2001, "The theory was that only such long-term investigations reveal useful information about potential plots." Attorney General John Ashcroft started making arrests earlier, before plots could develop, and this led to public criticism from former FBI officers. James Kallstrom said "You obviously want to play things out so you can fully identify the breadth and scope of the conspiracy. Obviously, the most efficient and effective way to do that is to bring it down to the last stage."

Alternative theories

Laurie Mylroie, an American author and analyst who has written extensively on Iraq and the war on terror, put forward an alternative theory on the events.