Ramzi Yousef is one of the main perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade
Center bombing, bombing of Philippine Airlines Flight 434, and a
co-conspirator in the Bojinka plot. In 1995, he was arrested by the Pakistani
Inter-Services Intelligence and U.S. Diplomatic Security Service at a guest
house in Islamabad, Pakistan while trying to set a bomb in a baby doll,
then extradited to the United States. He was tried in the U.S. District Court
for the Southern District of New York along with two co-conspirators and was
convicted of planning the Bojinka plot. He was sentenced to two life sentences
for his part in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and Bojinka plot.
Yousef's maternal uncle is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, with whom he allegedly planned
the Bojinka plot. Mohammed is a senior al-Qaeda member accused of being the
principal architect of the September 11 attacks in 2001. Yousef is serving his
life sentences at ADX Florence, located in Florence, Colorado.
Early life The name "Ramzi Yousef" is believed to
be an alias. The 9/11 Commission claimed that Yousef's real name is Abdul Basit
Mahmoud Abdul Karim. He was born in Kuwait to his parents who were both from
Pakistan. His father is Mohammed Abdul Karim from Balochistan, Pakistan. His
mother is believed to be the sister of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
When his family returned to Pakistan in the mid-1980s, Yousef was sent to the
United Kingdom for education. In 1986, he enrolled at Swansea Institute in
Wales, where he studied electrical engineering, graduating four years
later. He also studied at the Oxford College of Further Education to improve
his English. Yousef left the United Kingdom after
completing his studies and returned to Pakistan. He began to learn bomb making
in a terrorist training camp in Peshawar, before traveling to the United
States in 1992. 1993 World Trade Center bombing
The World Trade Center bombing was a terrorist attack that occurred on 26
February 1993, when a car bomb was detonated below Tower One of the World
Trade Center in New York City, New York. The 1,500 lb urea nitrate-hydrogen gas
enhanced device was intended to knock the North Tower into the South Tower, to
bring both towers down and kill thousands of people. It failed to do so
but killed six civilians and injured 1,042, including 919 civilians, 88
firefighters, and 35 police officers. Ramzi Yousef sent a letter to The New
York Times after the bombing which expressed his motive:
We are, the fifth battalion in the Liberation Army, declare our
responsibility for the explosion on the mentioned building. This action was done
in response for the American political, economical, and military support to
Israel, the state of terrorism, and to the rest of the dictator countries in
the region. Our Demands Are:
1 – Stop all military, economical, and political aid to Israel.
2 – All diplomatic relations with Israel must stop.
3 – Not to interfere with any of the Middle East countries interior affairs.
If our demands are not met, all of our functional groups in the army will
continue to execute our missions against the military and civilian targets in and
out the United States. For your own information, our army has more than
hundred and fifty suicidal soldiers ready to go ahead. The terrorism that
Israel practices must be faced with a similar one. The dictatorship and
terrorism that some countries are practicing against their own people must
also be faced with terrorism. The American people must know, that
their civilians who got killed are not better than those who are getting killed
by the American weapons and support. The American people are responsible for
the actions of their government and they must question all of the crimes that
their government is committing against other people. Or they – Americans – will
be the targets of our operations that could diminish them.
= Arrival in United States= On 1 September 1992, Yousef entered the
United States with an Iraqi passport of disputed authenticity. His companion,
Ahmed Ajaj, carried multiple immigration documents, among which was a crudely
falsified Swedish passport. Providing a smokescreen to facilitate Yousef's
entry, Ajaj was arrested on the spot when immigration officials found bomb
manuals, videotapes of suicide car bombers, and a cheat sheet on how to lie
to U.S. immigration inspectors in his luggage. Directors of the American
Counter-Terrorism program later tied the travel arrangements to a phone call from
Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, a militant Muslim preacher, to the Pakistani
telephone number 810604. Yousef was held for 72 hours and
repeatedly interrogated, but INS holding cells were overcrowded. Yousef,
requesting political asylum, was given a hearing date of 9 November 1992. He told
Jersey City Police that he was Abdul Basit Mahmud Abdul Karim, a Pakistani
national born and brought up in Kuwait, and that he had lost his passport. On
December 31, 1992, the Pakistani Consulate in New York issued a temporary
passport to Abdul Basit Mahmud Abdul Karim.
Yousef travelled around New York and New Jersey, during which time he made calls
to Abdel-Rahman via cell phone. Between 3 December and 27 December 1992, he made
conference calls to key numbers in Balochistan, Pakistan.
Ajaj never reclaimed the manuals and tapes, which remained at the FBI's New
York Office after Judge Reena Raggi had ordered the materials released in
December 1992. = Assembling the bomb=
Yousef, aided by Mohammed Salameh and Mahmud Abouhalima, began assembling the
1,500 lb urea nitrate-fuel oil device in his Pamrapo Avenue home in Jersey City
ready for delivery to the WTC on 26 February 1993. He ordered chemicals from
his hospital room when he had been injured in a car crash — one of three
accidents caused by Salameh in late 1992 and early in 1993.
Speaking in code by phone on 29 December 1992, Ajaj told Yousef that he had won
release of the bomb manuals but warned Yousef that picking them up might
jeopardize his "business". On one book carried by Ajaj in 1992 was a word
translated by the FBI as meaning "the basic rule." It was later found to be al
Qaeda – meaning "the base". During a 60 Minutes interview in 2002,
co-conspirator Abdul Rahman Yasin said that Yousef originally wanted to bomb
Jewish neighborhoods in New York City. Yasin added that after touring Crown
Heights and Williamsburg, Yousef had changed his mind. Yasin alleged that
Yousef was educated in bomb-making at a training camp in Peshawar, Pakistan.
= Explosion and aftermath= Yousef rented a Ryder van and on 26
February 1993, loaded it with explosives. He packed four cardboard
boxes into the back of the van, each containing a mixture of paper bags,
newspapers, urea, and nitric acid; next to them he placed three red metal
cylinders of compressed hydrogen. Four large containers of nitroglycerin were
loaded into the center of the van with Atlas Rockmaster blasting caps connected
to each, pp 154 ). The van was driven into the garage of
the World Trade Center, where it exploded. Using his Pakistani passport,
Yousef escaped from the United States hours later. It is believed that he fled
to Iraq and then Pakistan. As a result of the bombing, the FBI added Yousef as
the 436th person on its Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list on 21 April 1993.
1993 Benazir Bhutto assassination attempt
After returning to Pakistan in February 1993, Yousef went into hiding. That
summer, he allegedly took up a contract to assassinate the Prime Minister of
Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, which was initiated by members of Sipah-e-Sahaba.
The plot failed when Yousef and Abdul Hakim Murad were interrupted by police
outside Bhutto's residence. Yousef decided to abort the bombing and it blew
up as he was trying to recover the device. He escaped and went into hiding
during the investigation. Bojinka plot
After the Iranian shrine bombing, Yousef soon began planning the Bojinka Plot. It
included plans to assassinate Pope John Paul II while he visited the
Philippines, and to plant bombs inside several United and Delta Air Lines
flights out of Bangkok. On this plot, he allegedly worked with his maternal
uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. = Philippine Airlines Flight 434=
On 11 December 1994, Yousef conducted a trial run of the plan by boarding
Philippine Airlines Flight 434 from Manila to Tokyo, Japan, with a stopover
in the Philippine city of Cebu. His identity for the flight was that of an
Italian man named Armaldo Forlani. The cabin crew for this leg of the flight
later told investigators that Yousef changed seats several times during the
relatively short flight, with his last seat change coming after a return from
the lavatory. Yousef assembled a bomb in the lavatory,
set the timer to detonate four hours later, and put it in the lifejacket
pocket under seat 26K on the right-hand side of the fuselage. The domestic
flight attendant Maria Delacruz had noticed that Yousef kept switching seats
during the course of the Manila to Cebu flight, but did not warn the new cabin
crew boarding at Cebu of his behavior. Yousef and 25 other passengers left the
plane at Cebu, where 256 passengers and a new cabin crew boarded for the trip to
Tokyo. Many passengers were Japanese people; some were coworkers traveling as
part of a tour group. Airport congestion delayed the departure of Flight 434 from
Cebu for 38 minutes. All of the passengers had boarded by 8:30 a.m.,
with the bomb having been planted around two hours earlier. PAL 434 cleared for
takeoff at 8:48 a.m. Two hours before arrival at Tokyo, at
11:43 am, the bomb exploded while Flight 434 cruised on autopilot 31,000 feet
above the Japanese island of Minamidaitō southwest of Tokyo). The explosion
ripped in half the body of 24-year-old Haruki Ikegami, a Japanese businessman
occupying seat 26K. Ten passengers sitting in the seats in front of and
behind Ikegami were also injured. One needed urgent medical care. The bomb
tore out a two square-foot portion of the cabin floor, revealing the cargo
hold underneath, but leaving the fuselage of the plane intact. The rapid
expansion of energy from the bomb caused the plane to expand vertically slightly,
damaging cables to the steering and aileron controls. The bomb's orientation
caused the energy to be mostly absorbed by Ikegami; he was killed but the other
passengers and the plane was not catastrophically damaged.
The cockpit crew improvised to manipulate the plane's speed and
direction by varying the engines' throttle settings. Captain Eduardo Reyes
made an emergency landing at Okinawa's Naha Airport, saving 272 passengers and
20 crew. The plane became a crime scene; bomb fragments found in and around the
blast zone, as well as the lower half of Ikegami's body, provided clues pointing
investigators back to Manila. = Discovery by police=
After this success, Yousef returned to Manila, where he began preparing at
least a dozen bombs, each with more explosive materials. Weeks before his
planned attacks, a fire started in his Manila flat, forcing him to flee the
room, leaving everything behind. The fire made the apartment staff
suspicious, and soon police, led by Aida Fariscal, raided the flat and uncovered
the plot. A Philippine National Police raid in another Manila apartment
revealed related evidence that Abdul Murad, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and
Yousef had drawn up plans for flying an airplane into the CIA headquarters. The
information was passed on to the FAA, who warned individual airlines.
1995 U.S. airliner bombing attempt Despite the international manhunt,
Yousef escaped from Manila to Pakistan. On 31 January 1995, he flew from
Pakistan to Thailand and met with an associate Istaique Parker. Yousef told
Parker to check two suitcases filled with bombs, one on a Delta Air Lines
flight and another on a United Airlines flight. Both bombs were timed to blow up
over populated areas of the U.S. Parker spent much of the day at the airport,
but was reportedly too scared to approach the airlines with the
suitcases. Finally, Parker returned to Yousef's hotel and lied that employees
at the airline cargo sections were asking for passports and fingerprints,
making it too risky to go ahead with the plan.
Yousef, wanting to get the bombs on a plane bound for the U.S., called a
friend with diplomatic immunity in Qatar who was willing to take the suitcases to
London and check them on a flight to the U.S. The plan was that they would
explode mid-flight and destroy the plane. Yousef planned to use the
friend's diplomatic immunity to ensure the suitcases would be loaded on the
plane. According to Simon Reeve's book The New Jackals, the name of this friend
has not been revealed, but his father is said to be a very senior politician and
leading member of the establishment in Qatar. However, there was a problem and
the suitcases were not checked in. Yousef and Parker returned to Pakistan
on 2 February 1995.(Reeve, pp 98–100) Arrest, conviction and prison life
Following a tip-off from Istaique Parker, on 7 February 1995, Agents of
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence and Special Agents of the U.S.
Diplomatic Security Service, including Bill Miller and Jeff Riner, raided room
number 16 in the Su-Casa Guest House in Islamabad, Pakistan, and captured Yousef
before he could move to Peshawar. Parker was paid $2 million for the information
leading to Yousef's capture. During the raid, agents found Delta and United
Airlines flight schedules and bomb components in children's toys. Yousef
had chemical burns on his fingers. Yousef was sent to a prison in New York
City and held there until his trial. On September 5, 1996, Yousef and two
co-conspirators were convicted by U.S. District Court Judge Kevin Duffy for
their role in the Bojinka plot and were sentenced to life in prison without
parole. On 12 November 1997, Yousef was found
guilty of masterminding the 1993 bombing, and on January 8, 1998, Duffy
found Yousef guilty of plotting a "seditious conspiracy" to bomb the World
Trade Center and sentenced Yousef to 240 years in prison for the attack as well
as life in prison for the Flight 434 attack in 1994. He also recommended that
Yousef's entire sentence be served in solitary confinement.
During the 1998 trial, Yousef said: The Government in its summations and
opening statement said that I was a terrorist. Yes, I am a terrorist and I
am proud of it. And I support terrorism so long as it was against the United
States Government and against Israel, because you are more than terrorists;
you are the one who invented terrorism and using it every day. You are
butchers, liars and hypocrites. Duffy responded:
Ramzi Yousef, you claim to be an Islamic militant. Of all the persons killed or
harmed in some way by the World Trade Center bomb, you cannot name one who was
against you or your cause. You did not care, just so long as you left dead
bodies and people hurt. Ramzi Yousef, you are not fit to uphold
Islam. Your God is death. Your God is not Allah. . . .
You weren't seeking conversions. The only thing you wanted to do was to cause
death. Your God is not Allah. You worship death and destruction. What you
do, you do not for Allah; you do it only to satisfy your own twisted sense of
ego. You would have others believe that you
are a soldier, but the attacks on civilization for which you stand
convicted here were sneak attacks which sought to kill and maim totally innocent
people. . . . You, Ramzi Yousef, came to this country
pretending to be an Islamic fundamentalist, but you cared little or
nothing for Islam or the faith of the Muslims. Rather, you adored not Allah,
but the evil that you yourself have become. And I must say that as an
apostle of evil, you have been most effective.
Yousef is held at the high-security Supermax prison ADX Florence in
Florence, Colorado. The handcuffs Ramzi Yousef wore when he was captured in
Pakistan are displayed at the FBI Museum in Washington, DC. His Federal Prisoner
number is: 03911-000. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
In 1997, Osama bin Laden said during an interview that he did not know Yousef
but claimed to know Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is the mastermind behind
the September 11, 2001 attacks and Yousef's uncle. According to the 9/11
Commission, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said under interrogation that "Yousef was not
a member of al Qaeda and that Yousef never met Bin Laden."
See also Richard A. Clarke
References Further reading
Simon Reeve. The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the future
of terrorism. Northeastern University Press. ISBN 1-55553-509-7.
Peter Lance. Cover Up: What the Government Is Still Hiding About the War
on Terror. William Morrow. ISBN 0-06-054355-8.