WORLD TRADE CENTER BOMBING SUSPECTS (WASHINGTON POST)

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: STARGATE
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP96-00789R003900250005-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 4, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 2, 2002
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: April 5, 1993
• Content Type: NSPR

Iracle Center BomwrngrRe
eek 'Clarity of Motive'
o Ryder employees, had arrived
ck up the van in a red GM sedan
accompanied by a companion.
r officials said that roughly two
s after the explosion, Salameh
ared at the office and claimed
van had been stolen the night
re. He asked for his $400 dam-
deposit, but was told he must
file a police report.
llameh's name was already in the
s files. In 1990 he had demon-
:ed publicly on behalf of El-Say-
' osair, an Islamic firebrand who
been charged with, and acquitted
he 1991 slaying of Jewish De-
e League founder Meir Kahane.
meh had visited Nosair at the
prison in Attica, N.Y., where he
serving a sentence on lesser
ges,
ilameh gave investigators a par-
ar suspect to consider, and, as
)rtant, drew their attention to a
p of activists who orbited
ugh the larger Islamic commu-
in New York and New Jersey
attended the Abu Bakr mosque
Brooklyn and the Al-Salam
que in Jersey City. Rahman had
ched at both mosques.
he FBI had not previously con-
red these activists to be terror-
merely passionate militants. Yet
FBI had access to intelligence
rmation about them gathered as'
esult of at least three occur-
:es: the prosecution of Nosair;
emergence of Rahman as a pres-
in the New Jersey-New York
uric community; and the 1991
-der of Mustafa Shalabi.
'he Nosair trial was a watershed
it among Middle Eastern mili-
s in New York. Kahane, a hero to
y Jewish radicals, was viewed as
mbol of Zionist oppression to Is-
ic radicals. During the trial, the
I groups staged demonstrations,
on onnosite sides of the rniirt-
ment blames the Islamic Group for a
series of bombings and murders,
most especially the assassination of
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in
1981.
Egyptian security forces are en-
gaged in a massive, nationwide
crackdown aimed at fundamentalist
militants, including members of the
Islamic Group. The government has
jailed 700 suspected extremists in
response to a wave of violence that
has left nearly 150 people dead, at
the hands of either police or extrem-
ists.
Before he emigrated to the United
States, Rahman was acquitted of in-
volvement in Sadat's death, but an
FBI intelligence briefing during the
Persian Gulf War persuaded at least
one senior official to believe that he
posed a potentially serious threat
from his new base in New Jersey.
When Rahman arrived in the Unit-
ed States, Shalabi found him a res-
idence. Thereafter, they raised funds
for the Afghan resistance, but ulti-
mately had a falling out, according to
published statements by several as-
sociates. In March 1991, Shalabi was
found dead in his Brooklyn home,
shot and knifed. There have been no
arrests.
In addition, five months before the
trade center bombing, about 20
members of the two mosques who
attended Nosair's trial or visited him
at Attica were subpoenaed by a fed-
eral grand jury, according to the
New York Times. Ahmed A. Satta, a
postal worker, told the Times that
FBI agents grilled him about Nosair,
Shalabi and Rahman.
To officials, then, the circumstan-
tial clues being gathered by agents in
New Jersey seemed to fit into a larg-
ease 2003/01/17WUR 'TR E9 Jc5BQ