{"id":1123,"date":"2012-06-09T14:06:26","date_gmt":"2012-06-09T21:06:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/?p=1123"},"modified":"2012-09-06T10:51:18","modified_gmt":"2012-09-06T17:51:18","slug":"the-blind-sheikh-omar-abdel-rahman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/?p=1123","title":{"rendered":"The Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"The%20Blind%20Sheikh%20Omar%20Abdel%20Rahman\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><p><a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/blindsheikh-cu.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-1124\" title=\"blindsheikh cu\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/blindsheikh-cu.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"349\" height=\"198\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/blindsheikh-cu.png 349w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/blindsheikh-cu-300x170.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 349px) 100vw, 349px\" \/><\/a>Blinded shortly after birth, Omar Abdel Rahman had memorized the Koran by the age of eleven. He earned a degree in Koranic studies in 1972 from the Al Azhar University in Cairo, where he was influenced by the writings Sayyid Qutb, an intellectual who was an early adherent of the Muslim Brotherhood.<\/p>\n<p>The Brotherhood, or Ikhwan, was founded in 1928. It spawned two of Egypt\u2019s most virulent terror sects: The al Gamma\u2019a Islamayah (Islamic Group), run by Rahman, and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ), led by Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the scion of a prominent Cairo family. Begun as a student movement within the Brotherhood, the EIJ splintered off in the early 1970s to become a covert military arm, while the Ikhwan sought more mainstream political legitimacy. Since al-Islambouli, the lead Sadat shooter, was an outspoken EIJ member, al-Zawahiri was jailed as a co-conspirator.\u00a0 One of three hundred arrested, the bespectacled surgeon stood trial as \u201cDefendant No. 113.\u201d He was convicted on weapons charges and sentenced to three years in an Egyptian prison, where he later claimed that he was severely tortured.<\/p>\n<p>But incarceration only served to radicalize the young doctor. He emerged in 1984 as a leading spokesman for jailed Islamic militants. One of his fellow inmates was Mustafa Shalabi, a thirty-year-old red-headed electrical contractor who, years later,would establish an early beachhead for the jihad at a mosque in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n<p>In the decade to come, Rahman, al-Zawahiri, and Shalabi would collaborate with Osama bin Laden, weaving the threads of the IG and the EIJ into the radical new terror network called al Qaeda. Each of the three Egyptian leaders would have a significant impact on the life of Ali Mohamed, offering him direct access to bin Laden, the terror prince, himself.<\/p>\n<p><strong>ENTER SHEIKH OMAR<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In July 1990, following a similar path to Ali Mohamed, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman got a CIA-approved visa, slipped past the same State Department Watch List, and landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.. He was met at the airport by Mustafa Shalabi, the trusted Egyptian associate of the murdered Abdullah Azzam. Mahmoud Abouhalima, \u201cthe Red,\u201d one of Ali\u2019s star pupils, used his limo license to chauffeur the Sheikh around the tri-state area.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPrior to that time\u20141988, \u201989\u2014terrorism for all intents and purposes didn\u2019t exist in the United States,\u201d says Corrigan, the retired JTTF investigator. \u201cBut Abdel Rahman\u2019s arrival in 1990 really stoked the flames of terrorism in this country. This was a major-league ball player in what at the time was a minor-league ball park. He was . . . looked up to worldwide. A mentor to bin Laden, he was involved with the MAK over in Pakistan.\u201d In Corrigan\u2019s view, the arrival of the blind Sheikh was \u201ca real coup for the local crew members like Shalabi, Nosair, Abouhalima and Ayyad.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Before long, Rahman was preaching at three separate mosques: the al Farooq at Atlantic Avenue; the Abu Bakr on Foster Avenue in Brooklyn &#8212; a mosque his radical followers soon took over &#8212; and the dingy Al-Salaam (Mosque of Peace), located on the third floor of a Jersey City building above a cell-phone store.<\/p>\n<p>Shalabi, whose help Ali Mohamed sought before his Afghan war leave, welcomed the Sheikh with open arms, even installing him in a Brooklyn apartment. But the cleric coveted the thousands in cash still rolling into Shalabi\u2019s Alkifah Center, and as the months went by, he began quarreling with him openly in the mosques.<\/p>\n<p>Curiously, during this period, Ali Mohamed entered into another, previously unreported, dispute with the U.S. government. He was having trouble with an agency that had nothing to do with terrorism: the IRS. From 1988 Mohamed owed taxes of $2,632.94. The following year his unpaid balance with the IRS had escalated by an additional $7,825.61 to a combined debt of just under $10,500.00. Based on the standard salary for an army sergeant in those years, that tally seems well beyond what his tax burden should have been\u2014raising questions as to what other income sources Mohamed may have enjoyed during those years. Whatever the source, it would take another five years before the debt was paid and the IRS wiped Mohamed\u2019s slate clean.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Ali Mohamed had other things to worry about. By the fall of 1990, one of his Egyptian students was growing more and more restless. El Sayyid Nosair, the janitor who worked in the courthouse basement, had joined the IG, the blind Sheikh\u2019s ultra-violent anti-Western terrorist group, and he was itching to make his bones for the jihad.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A LEAD TO THE 9\/11 PLOT\u2014TEN YEARS EARLY<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Nosair kept a mailbox at a check cashing store in Jersey City called Sphinx Trading. It was located at 2828 Kennedy Boulevard in Jersey City, four doors down from Sheikh Rahman\u2019s Jersey hangout, the al-Salaam Mosque. One of the most extraordinary discoveries of this investigation is that Sphinx Trading held a key that could have put the FBI right into the middle of the 9\/11 plot, months before September 11.<\/p>\n<p>That mailbox of Nosair\u2019s is a symbol of how so many roads in the 9\/11 story lead back to the blind Sheikh and his cell members. It underscores why the 9\/11 Commission was bound to get only part of the truth when it focused on the years 1998 forward in trying to untangle the \u201cplanes as missiles\u201d plot. As we\u2019ll see, El Sayyid Nosair and Sphinx Trading were each enormous \u201cdots\u201d on the road to 9.11 that the FBI left disconnected.<\/p>\n<p>During the penalty phase of the Moussaoui trial in March 2006, Minneapolis agent Harry Samit accused FBI officials of acting with \u201ccriminal negligence\u201d in failing to approve FISA search warrants. I believe that the Bureau\u2019s seeming inability to tie Nosair and Sphinx to the 9\/11 plot can fairly be cited as another example.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, within months of the Sheikh\u2019s arrival, Nosair was ready to use the shooting skills Ali Mohamed had taught him, to fire the first shots in al Qaeda\u2019s new war against America. His target was Rabbi Meier Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League (JDL). Kahane openly advocated the removal of all non-Jews from Israel. His views were considered so extreme that he\u2019d been banned from the Israeli Knesset; and he\u2019d recently returned to New York City.<br \/>\nAt this point we don\u2019t know for sure how much of a role Ali Mohamed may have played in designing the plot, but on his frequent New York visits he stayed with Nosair and used his house at 577 Olympia Avenue in Cliffside Park, New Jersey to store the intelligence that he\u2019d stolen from Fort Bragg. In one manila folder Mohamed stashed Green Beret manuals marked \u201cTop Secret for Training.\u201d He even hid communiqu\u00e9s classified as Secret from the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.<\/p>\n<p>One of these was a JCS \u201cWarning Order,\u201d addressed to eight separate U.S. military\u00a0\u00a0 command centers and support groups, the White House, and the Defense Intelligence Agency, not to mention the U.S. embassies in Cairo, Egypt, Khartoum, Sudan, Mogadishu, Somalia, and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere were dozens and dozens of documents that were of various classified status found in Nosair\u2019s possessions after the search warrant was executed,\u201d says Steven Emerson. \u201cFrom the actual ship docking locations of U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf to training manuals for special operations warfare. That would\u2019ve been of immense value to the holy warriors and to the World Trade Center conspirators back in 1993, as they were trained for carrying out terrorists operations.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Another document, entitled \u201cLocation of Selected Units on 05 December 1988,\u201d listed the precise positions of Special Operations Forces (SOF) worldwide\u2014including the army\u2019s Green Berets and Navy SEAL teams\u2014along with details of their missions. That document, along with the JCS \u201cWarning Order,\u201d is included\u2014complete with Mohamed\u2019s handwritten notes in Arabic\u2014 as Appendix __ on page __. That single communiqu\u00e9 could have easily gotten Mohamed indicted on charges of espionage and treason, defying the legal judgement of the JAG officer at Fort Bragg who had spurned Lt. Col. Anderson\u2019s request for a court martial.<\/p>\n<p>The cache of intelligence from Nosair\u2019s house also contained hints of al Qaeda\u2019s most famous New York target. Along with a receipt for 1400 rounds of ammunition and an Arabic manual on improvised explosive devices, there were maps of the World Trade Center, along with audio tapes of Sheikh Rahman exhorting his faithful to \u201cmount steeds of war\u201d for the jihad.<\/p>\n<p>One passage deep inside Nosair\u2019s notebook called for the \u201cdestruction of the enemies of Allah . . . by . . . exploding . . . their civilized pillars . . . and their high world buildings.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But Ali Mohamed had schooled Nosair in the tradecraft of secret cells. The \u201cbrothers\u201d should always use code, he advised. If they had to write down something, their notebooks should begin in Arabic with passages from the Koran or Islamic poetry so as to throw off any investigators who might seize the material.<\/p>\n<p>Nosair had reason to believe his notebook might be seized.<\/p>\n<p><strong>THE FIRST MURDER<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>On the night of November 5, 1990, as Kahane left the podium in the Morgan D Room of Marriott\u2019s East Side Hotel, Nosair burst in and began firing the same .357 Magnum photographed by the FBI at Calverton sixteen months before. The rabbi was struck twice, once in the neck.<\/p>\n<p>Nosair rushed from the conference room but was grabbed by Irving Franklin, a 73 year old Kahane supporter. After a brief scuffle Nosair shot the old man in the leg, raced toward the hotel\u2019s front door, searching for a taxi.<\/p>\n<p>This is where Ali Mohamed\u2019s possible role in the assassination comes into play.<\/p>\n<p>The original plot called for two of Mohamed\u2019s trainees, Mahmoud Abouhalima and Mohamed Salameh, to assist in the getaway. Nosair was to leave his car with Salameh on nearby Park Avenue and then walk to the Marriott a block away. Salameh would then drive Nosair\u2019s Olds back home after the killing. Abouhalima, who had a hack license, was supposed to be waiting outside of the hotel in a cab to speed Nosair away.<\/p>\n<p>But the doorman at the hotel waved Abouhalima away from the entrance, according to Shannon Taylor a freelance photographer who took the famous shot of Kahane lying in extremis.\u00a0 So when the wide-eyed Nosair rushed from the hotel, he mistakenly got into a taxi driven by Franklin Garcia, a New York cabbie. Suddenly, a young follower of Kahane jumped in front of the cab and prevented it from moving. In the back seat, Nosair realized the error and pointed the barrel of the .357 to Garcia\u2019s head, whereupon the taxi driver burst from the cab. He later told jurors that he was so terrified that \u201cI almost pee my pants.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Now, bursting out of the cab and running down Lexington Avenue with the nickel-plated gun, Nosair was spotted by Carlos Acosta, a uniformed U.S. postal inspector who drew his service weapon. Nosair fired first, wounding Acosta in the shoulder just outside the edge of his flak vest, but the heroic officer dropped to his knee and returned fire as Nosair started to run; striking the Egyptian in the neck with a single shot.<\/p>\n<p>A pair of ambulances rushed both the shooter and the victim to Bellevue Hospital\u2019s trauma unit. Operated on in parallel stalls, Nosair survived but Kahane expired.<\/p>\n<p>After the killing, Abouhalima and Salameh regrouped at Nosair\u2019s home in Cliffside Park, New Jersey.\u00a0 But they were taken into custody by the NYPD later as material witnesses.The house was raided early the next day. Detectives and FBI agents seized forty-seven boxes in the raid\u2014boxes that included prima facie evidence of an international bombing conspiracy with the World Trade Center as a target. Among the files seized was a potential \u201chit list\u201d of prominent Jewish figures, among them federal judge Jack B. Weinstein, who would go on to play a prominent role in the suppression of key al Qaeda-related evidence by the FBI and Southern District prosecutors six years later.<\/p>\n<p>Nosair\u2019s Oldsmobile was later found on Second Avenue, three blocks away from where it was originally parked, suggesting that it had been moved by somebody after the shooting. But later that day, November 6th, the NYPD\u2019s chief of detectives, Joseph Borelli, concluded that the Kahane murder was a \u201clone gunman\u201d shooting. The evidence was immediately impounded by the Manhattan District Attorney\u2019s office, which ultimately tried the case as a local murder.<\/p>\n<p>The conventional wisdom, as expressed in several books dealing with the Kahane murder, is that Manhattan district attorney Robert Morgenthau simply acquiesced to Borelli\u2019s hasty assessment.. The Congressional Joint Inquiry tasked with examining intelligence failures leading up to 9\/11 concluded that \u201cThe NYPD and the District Attorney\u2019s office . . . reportedly wanted the appearance of speedy justice and a quick resolution to a volatile situation. By arresting Nosair, they felt they had accomplished both.\u201d As I noted myself in 1000 Years for Revenge, the prosecutors were eager to avoid a \u201cshow trial.\u201d especially after Nosair \u201clawyered up\u201d with the celebrated attorney William Kuntsler<\/p>\n<p><strong>NEW REVELATIONS FROM THE TRIAL TRANSCRIPT<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>At the time I wrote that passage I didn\u2019t have access to the full transcript of the subsequent Nosair trial; so I cited the Joint Inquiry conclusion based on the best evidence I had. While researching that first book in the summer of 2003, no complete copy of the Nosair trial transcript was available. But in this new phase of the investigation, which focused on Nosair\u2019s trainer Ali Mohamed, I wanted to examine every aspect of the murder. So in the fall of 2005, I reached out to Sara Stanley and Joyce Fisher, the court reporters who had transcribed most of the 3,000 pages of trial transcript in People v. El Sayyid Nosair, Indictment No. 14030-90.<\/p>\n<p>With their help, and assistance from Barbara Thompson, director of public information in D.A. Robert Morgenthau\u2019s office, I was able to piece together a complete transcript. It proved to be an eye opener and led me to conduct an extensive follow-up interview with William Greenbaum, the chief prosecutor on the case, who has never before spoken publicly about the trial\u2014What I discovered now alters the historical record of those events. The evidence now shows that, from early on, the Manhattan district attorney\u2019s office was pushing the FBI and federal prosecutors toward a broader investigation of the Kahane killing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe sensed a much bigger conspiracy,\u201d said Greenbaum, \u201cand we were sure that more than one person was involved . . . When we looked at Nosair\u2019s keys, we asked ourselves, Where is his car? It was a green Olds. We looked for it in Manhattan. The first piece of the puzzle fell into place when a really great detective named Jose Rosario informed us that he had gone down Second Avenue at a certain point looking for the car and it had not appeared and then later it got ticketed and towed from a location he\u2019d already checked. Which means somebody moved it for him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s incredible now, thinking back, how many commands were working that murder: You had the FBI\u2019s Newark and New York offices, the Jersey and New York Joint Terrorist Task Forces, the Cliffside Park P.D., the Bergen County [New Jersey] prosecutor\u2019s office, the 17th and Midtown North precincts of the NYPD, the U.S. Postal Inspectors, and our office, not to mention NYPD Crime Scene.\u201d Greenbaum says that the initial investigation by his office turned up evidence that they were \u201cdealing with something much bigger.\u201d But shortly after the killing, \u201ca decision was made to turn the boxes of evidence over to the Feds. They held onto them for several months before we got them back.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At that point the chain of custody had been broken, and much of the evidence\u2014including the material Ali Mohamed had stolen at Fort Bragg\u2014became tainted and inadmissible.<\/p>\n<p>Soon, says Greenbaum, the D.A.\u2019s office lost the support of other federal agencies for trying the Kahane killing in the context of a much bigger conspiracy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt first,\u201d he says, \u201cwe had tons of low-level Federal people coming in to us and supporting the idea of a broader inquiry. When we said \u2018These Islamic guys want to eat us up,\u2019 they agreed and I felt that there was a real chance to get to the bottom of the plot. To see who, if anyone, had supported Nosair.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That process would have led the D.A.\u2019s investigators directly to Ali Mohamed via the evidence from Fort Bragg\u2014a full eight years before the FBI finally arrested him.<\/p>\n<p>But Greenbaum says, \u201cthe Feds would go back to 26 Federal [the FBI\u2019s New York Office] and nothing would come of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe even had Army people from Fort Bragg who came up interested in the maps that were found in Nosair\u2019s place,\u201d he says. \u201cBut then they went home and we never heard a word.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Still, that didn\u2019t stop Greenbaum from pushing. At a bail hearing for Nosair on December 18, 1990, he declared, that \u201cThis is no ordinary crime and an ordinary murder case. It is anything but. It is a planned assassination of a controversial and public figure.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Greenbaum didn\u2019t realize it at the time, but one of the discoveries made by investigators for Morgenthau\u2019s office would have chilling relevance in years to come.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A \u201cMETHOD FOR FORCING ENTRY INTO AN AIRPLANE<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As the bail hearing continued, Greenbaum went on to cite a surprising list of evidence seized both from Nosair\u2019s home and his locker in the basement of the court building across the street. It included: \u201cmaterial relating to bomb making,\u201d \u201cmaterial . . .\u00a0 to train an individual on the uses and makeup of a hand grenade,\u201d and guidelines \u201cfor breaking and entering into a building.\u201d<br \/>\nThen Greenbaum made a disclosure that went unnoticed in the press coverage of the trial at the time. Also seized in the Nosair house search, he said, was a training manual \u201cin Arabic language\u201d on the \u201cmethod for forcing entry into an airplane.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Since much of the training material seized from Nosair\u2019s Cliffside Park house was furnished by Ali Mohamed, this was early, if circumstantial, proof of Ali\u2019s possible connection to the 9\/11 plot that would be executed eleven years later. This reference to forced airplane entry tactics was not mentioned in the nineteen-page FBI 302 cataloguing the items seized from Nosair\u2019s Olympia Avenue house at the time. Morgenthau\u2019s office was conscientious enough to get a translation, demonstrating their willingness to take the case further and underscoring Greenbaum\u2019s point that the Kahane murder was no \u201cordinary\u201d crime.<\/p>\n<p>And there was more evidence to support that opinion. At the bail hearing, Greenbaum cited a security-products price list found in Nosair\u2019s house. It advertised \u201caudio jammers, recorder controls, cameras and sentry detectors.\u201d Also found were ads clipped from gun magazines hawking \u201cbarrel extensions and dummy suppressors,\u201d also known as silencers. Later, Greenbaum asserted that Nosair had \u201caltered\u201d the .357 Magnum murder weapon, \u201cwe believe, to accommodate a silencer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In perhaps his most shocking revelation, Greenbaum reported that Nosair\u2019s locker in the court building contained \u201ca long thin vial\u201d of \u201csodium cyanide.\u201d This didn\u2019t seem to ring any bells at the time, but later, after his arrest, Ramzi Yousef told FBI agents that he had considered lacing the 1,500 pound bomb with cyanide so that the deadly vapors would\u00a0 rise up through the elevator shafts of the Twin Towers and kill thousands.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s impossible to say whether the vial in Nosair\u2019s locker might have been tied to that fiendish scheme, but again, the common link between Nosair and the cell that helped Yousef construct the bomb, was Ali Mohamed.<\/p>\n<p>Greenbaum gave other hints that Nosair was more than a \u201clone gunman.\u201d Recovered in those forty-seven boxes of evidence from Cliffside Park were articles on the assassination of Anwar Sadat and the attempted murder of Egyptian foreign minister Zaki Badr, for which Ali Mohamed\u2019s leader, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, was later indicted, convicted in absentia, and sentenced to death.<\/p>\n<p><strong>OUTSIDE SUPPORT FOR NOSAIR<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Now at the bail hearing Greenbaum warned that \u201cindividuals . . . outside our country\u201d were concerned about Nosair\u2019s welfare. The D.A.\u2019s office had confirmed press reports that Al-Fatah, the terrorist organization, \u201cwould be willing to put up any amount of bail.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt wasn\u2019t the kind of offer one would expect in a lone gunman shooting,\u201d Greenbaum told me later.<\/p>\n<p>There were plenty of signs that foreign \u201cindividuals\u201d were looking out for Nosair.<\/p>\n<p>One of them was Abdel Halim Mandour, a prominent Egyptian lawyer with close ties to Sheikh Rahman\u2019s terror group the al Gamma\u2019a Islamiyah (IG).\u00a0 Mandour had shown up at a preliminary hearing for Nosair as an observer. In 1997 Mandour was denied a visa to enter the U.K. in what the Guardian described as \u201cthe Egyptian government\u2019s campaign to persuade Britain to crack down on fundamentalists accused of involvement in terrorism.\u201d In October 1997 the Arabic News reported that Mandour was the \u201chead of the defending body of the leader of the I.G.\u201d\u2014that is, Sheikh Rahman. A month later, Mandour spoke in defense of sixty-six defendants accused in the I.G.\u2019s bloody Luxor massacre, in which fifty-eight people were slaughtered by a group calling itself \u201cOmar Abdel-Rahman\u2019s Squadron of Havoc and Destruction.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Years later, Mandour was cited in a Reuters story on the I.G. as speaking at a press conference with the blind Sheikh\u2019s son. Nosair himself was an I.G. member and had sworn allegiance to Rahman. So Mandour\u2019s presence at the hearing in 1990 was further evidence of the killer\u2019s ties to an international terrorist organization. But defense counsel Michael Warren tried to explain away Mandour\u2019s visit by claiming that he was merely \u201csent here under sponsorship by the Egyptian bar.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Judge Alvin Schlesinger accepted that explanation without challenge.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cODIOUS\u201d DEATH THREATS<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Throughout the trial, Schlesinger played a key role in limiting the evidence to the simple shooting itself. At the bail hearings he admitted that he had received death threats that were \u201codious in nature.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have no idea who these people are or what groups they come from or represent,\u201d Schlesinger declared, but he indicated that the calls\u2014which were \u201cmarked by hate [the likes of] which I have never experienced\u201d\u2014came from the Nosair camp. Schlesinger, who is Jewish, also chastised defense counsel, Michael Warren, for a statement he\u2019d made to the press suggesting that the judge had been \u201cbought off by Zionist influences.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But crusading firebrand William Kuntsler, shot back, repeatedly accusing Schlesinger of bias. He went so far as to demand that the judge recuse himself. The motion was denied, but Schlesinger felt compelled to declare his impartiality:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have . . . had throughout my lifetime very extended . . . friendships with people of the Moslem faith,\u201d he said. \u201cThey have been my friends. I have entertained and been entertained by delegates from Egypt. I\u2019ve been entertained years past by the chairman of the Arab League who then happened to be an Egyptian . . . Never in my personal experience has there been any bias for or against any particular people in any religion . . . There\u2019s nothing in my life or anything I have done or said that would manifest any such prejudice.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Greenbaum, for one, felt that the bias accusations led Schlesinger to \u201cbend over backwards\u201d at trial to \u201cfavor the other side.\u201d \u201cKuntsler did a fantastic job for his client,\u201d he says. \u201cHe had the judge wrapped around his finger.He was playing him like a violin.\u201d \u201d<\/p>\n<p>Did Schlesinger cut the defense extra slack? The very fact that he even considered granting bail for Nosair suggests as much. With his international ties, and only sketchy ties to the community, Nosair was clearly a flight risk. At the December 18 hearing, Greenbaum introduced evidence that Nosair had either lived at or received mail at six separate addresses in New York and New Jersey over the previous two years, including two in Brooklyn and three in Jersey City, and that he\u2019d stolen a New York state license plate for his Oldsmobile prior to the murder.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAfter murdering his victim,\u201d Greenbaum told the judge, \u201che shot two people, one of whom was a uniformed police officer, and put a gun to the head of an innocent cab driver on the street in order to effect his escape, indicating a desire to escape justice.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, Greenbaum pointed out, Nosair would have no strong reason to stay behind in the U.S. \u201cThe defendant began life as an Egyptian national,\u201d he told the judge. \u201cHe has family in Egypt. He has places to go, he has people who are willing to post whatever amount of bail is set for this defendant, and if he makes any kind of bail, whether it is in the millions or hundreds of thousands, he is gone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As 1990 came to a close, any hope of connecting Mohamed back to the Kahane murder was lost. But Greenbaum\u2019s arguments proved successful. Nosair was never granted bail; he remained in the city jail at Rikers Island until trial began the following year. But this previously unexamined bail hearing reveals how hard\u2014if unsuccessfully\u2014the Manhattan D.A.\u2019s office worked to signal the Egyptian\u2019s ties to a much bigger conspiracy.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile the FBI-NYPD search of Nosair\u2019s house the night after the murder signaled another enormous misstep by the Bureau\u2019s New York office. Shortly after their arrest as material witnesses, Mahmoud Abouhalima and Mohammed Salameh were released.\u00a0 Though they had been photographed at the Calverton shooting range in 1989 with the full knowledge of JTTF investigator Tommy Corrigan, he admitted in the summer of 2006 that he had been unware that the two Ali Mohamed trainees were even in custody in connection with the Kahane slaying.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t remember ever seeing Salameh and Abouhalima being brought in,\u201d says Corrigan. \u201cI\u2019m not saying that it didn\u2019t happen, but I wasn\u2019t aware of that until many years later, actually [learning about it] on a news program.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If the FBI had tied Abouhalima and Salemeh to the Calverton surveillance photos, as some authors have suggested, they didn\u2019t make the connection soon enough to keep them in custody. Ali Mohamed, who had played a key role in al Qaeda\u2019s first murder on U.S. soil, slipped back into the quiet obscurity of Santa Clara, not even close to anybody\u2019s suspect list. But months later another violent homicide in New York would take place, and this time the victim would be a man Mohamed had once called a close friend. The question was, Would the Feds pick up on al Qaeda\u2019s chief spy this time?<\/p>\n<p>TO READ MORE: Order <a title=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0060886889\/sr=8-1\/qid=1156224481\/ref=pd_bbs_1\/104-7122873-9039940?ie=UTF8\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0060886889\/sr=8-1\/qid=1156224481\/ref=pd_bbs_1\/104-7122873-9039940?ie=UTF8\">TRIPLE CROSS<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"The%20Blind%20Sheikh%20Omar%20Abdel%20Rahman\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><p>Blinded shortly after birth, Omar Abdel Rahman had memorized the Koran by the age of eleven. He earned a degree in Koranic studies in 1972 from the Al Azhar University in Cairo, where he was influenced by the writings Sayyid Qutb, an intellectual who was an early adherent of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood, or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1125,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1123"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1123"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1128,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1123\/revisions\/1128"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}