Ramzi Yousef

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During a CBS 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.

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 near Florence, Colorado. He shares a cell block that is commonly referred to as "Bombers Row" with Terry Nichols, Eric Rudolph, and Ted Kaczynski.

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." Some authors, however, have made note of a stronger link between Yousef and bin Laden.

On 12 November 1997, Yousef was found guilty of masterminding the 1993 bombing, and on January 8, 1998, Judge Duffy found Yousef guilty of plotting a "seditious conspiracy" to bomb the World Trade Center and sentenced Yousef to life plus 240 years in prison for both bombings. He also recommended that Yousef's entire sentence be served in solitary confinement.

On September 5, 1996, Yousef and two co-conspirators were convicted for their role in the Bojinka plot and were sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Kevin Duffy to life in prison without parole.

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 (at the time, Yousef's maternal uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was living in Qatar as the guest of a Qatari cabinet official). However, there was a problem and the suitcases were not checked in. Yousef and Parker returned to Pakistan on 2 February 1995.

Following a tip-off from Istaique Parker, on 7 February 1995, Agents of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) 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 under the Rewards for Justice Program 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 federal prison in New York City and held there until his trial.

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.

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 received two life sentences plus 240 years for his part in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and Bojinka plot.

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 (680 kg) urea nitrate-hydrogen gas enhanced device was intended to knock the North Tower (Tower 1) into the South Tower (Tower 2), 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 (including an EMS worker), 88 firefighters, and 35 police officers.

Yousef, aided by Mohammed A. Salameh and Mahmud Abouhalima, began assembling the 1,500 lb (680 kg) 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.

Yousef rented a Ryder van and on 26 February 1993, loaded it with powerful 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.

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.

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.

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.

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, an Egyptian 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 (SAAG 484 2002).

Yousef traveled 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 (SAAG 484 2002).

Ajaj never reclaimed the manuals and tapes, which remained at the New York office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) after Judge Reena Raggi had ordered the materials released in December 1992.

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."

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.

Ramzi Yousef (Arabic: رمزي يوسف ‎ Ramzī Yūsuf; born 27 April 1968) is a Pakistani convicted terrorist who was one of the main perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the bombing of Philippine Airlines Flight 434, and was a co-conspirator in the Bojinka plot. In 1995, he was arrested by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) 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.