Egyptian Omar Abdel-Rahman speaks during a news conference in this file still image taken from a February 1993 video footage released on January 18, 2013.
The Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, has died at 78, People’s Pundit Daily has confirmed. Abdel-Rahman died at Butner Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina.
Abdel-Rahman, who lived in New York City, along with nine others were convicted for plotting terror attacks and other targets in New York City.
He was serving a life sentence at the medical center. When the Muslim Brotherhood leader Muhammed Morsi was elected president of Egypt, he urged Barack Obama to free the Blind Sheikh on humanitarian grounds.
Abdel-Rahman was the leader of Al-Jama’a al-Islamiyya, also known as “The Islamic Group,” which was a militant Islamist movement in Egypt considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and Egyptian governments. The group was responsible for the November 1997 Luxor massacre, in which 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians were killed.
While serving what would be only a three year sentence in an Egyptian jail, he was awaiting trial on charges of issuing a fatwa resulting in the 1981 assassination of Anwar Sadat by Egyptian Islamic Jihad.
