April 04, 2003, 22:30
A federal appeals court today upheld the conviction of mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing, seen now as an ominous warning of the landmark's destruction eight years later. The US Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction of Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, who is serving a life term for orchestrating the attack and for a second scheme to bomb a dozen US passenger jets.
The panel, in its 186 page ruling, also affirmed the conviction of two co-defendants, Eyad Ismoil, who drove the van in the twin tower attack and Abdul Murad, who was involved in the air plane plot. The World Trade Centre explosion on February 26, 1993 killed six and injured more than 1 000 and was at the time called by prosecutors, "the worst terrorist attack" on US soil.
Yousef fled New York after the blast. He was one of the world's most wanted fugitives until he was arrested in February 1995 in Islamabad, Pakistan, and returned to New York. He was convicted in November 1997. During the trial, a Secret Service agent testified Yousef had boasted about planning the blast and said he had hoped one tower would fall on the other, killing thousands of Americans.
Yousef was also convicted of being the architect of a scheme to murder about 4 000 passengers over a 48 hour period in January 1995 as they returned on Delta, Northwest and United flights to the US from the Far East. When Yousef was sentenced in 1998, Kevin Duffy, the US District Judge described him as an "apostle of evil". During that hearing, Yousef spoke for about 20 minutes criticising the US for its support of Israel.
"Yes I am a terrorist and I'm proud of it. I support terrorism as long as it is used against the US and Israel," Yousef said.
The airline plot was discovered in January 1995 when a fire broke out in a Manila apartment shared by Yousef and Murad. When the Philippine National Police searched the apartment, they found explosives, bomb-making manuals, timers and a Toshiba laptop computer containing flight information, detonation times and a letter claiming responsibility for the planned bombings.
Yousef fled to Pakistan after the fire, but Murad returned to the apartment and was arrested. Yousef, who used about a dozen aliases, has said he is from Pakistan and was a trained electronics engineer and explosives expert. He gave his birth date as April 27, 1968.
In a 1994 interview with the Arabic newspaper Al Hayat, Yousef said that while his father is Pakistani, his mother is Palestinian and his grandmother lived in Haifa, Israel. He also said he grew up in Kuwait. He is the nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Al-Qaeda operative captured last month and identified by Washington as the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 hijacked plane attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon that killed over 3 000 people. Authorities believe Mohammed was involved in the Manila plot. - Reuters
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