Washington 19 Feb (ANA) - The so called Blind Sheik, Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was convicted of plotting terror attacks in New York City in the decade before 9/11 has died in a federal prison. He was 78. Abdel-Rahman, blind since infancy from diabetes, had diabetes and coronary artery disease, died Saturday at the Federal Correction Complex in Butner, North Carolina, said its acting executive assistant, Kenneth McKoy. The inmate spent seven years at the prison medical facility while serving a life sentence. "We are saddened by your departure, father," the cleric's daughter, Asmaa, tweeted in Arabic. Abdel-Rahman was a key spiritual leader for militants and became a symbol for radicals during his decades in U.S. prisons, where his captivity inspired plots, protests and calls for violence. The only person charged in the U.S. in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Zacarias Moussaoui, had said he was training for a mission to fly a jet into the White House if the government refused to free Abdel-Rahman. Abdel-Rahman was the leader of one of Egypt's most feared militant groups, the Gamaa Islamiya, or the "Islamic Group," which at its height led a campaign of violence aimed at toppling that country's onetime president, Hosni Mubarak. Abdel-Rahman fled Egypt to the U.S. in 1990 and began teaching in a New Jersey mosque. A circle of his followers were convicted in the Feb. 26, 1993, truck bombing of New York's World Trade Center that killed six people - eight years before al-Qaida's suicide plane hijackers brought the towers down.

Later in 1993, Abdel-Rahman was charged and later convicted as the leader of a group that conspired to bomb the United Nations and other New York landmarks, including the George Washington Bridge and the Lincoln and Holland tunnels. Those attacks were never carried out, but U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey, who later became attorney general, told the defendants at sentencing that if the plot hadn't been thwarted it would have: "brought about devastation on a scale that beggars the imagination, certainly on a scale unknown in this country since the Civil War." Abdel-Rahman was also convicted of plotting to assassinate Mubarak. Defense lawyer Ron Kuby, who once represented the sheik, said Abdel-Rahman's war was with a corrupt Egyptian government and he believes there was insufficient evidence to link him to the New York plots.(ANA)

FA/ANA/19 February 2017----