| rdfs:comment | - Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, more commonly known as “the Blind Sheik,” had inspired several members of a Jersey City mosque, including Abdul Rahman Yasin, to park a truck bomb in the parking structure of the World Trade Center. Their plan had been simple: they’d parked a vehicle filled with homemade explosives in the parking structure beneath Tower One. They had hoped to blast loose the support foundations on one side, causing that building to fall into its twin. They had also included cyanide gas, hoping the gas would expand though the ventilation system and cause additional deaths.
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| abstract | - Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, more commonly known as “the Blind Sheik,” had inspired several members of a Jersey City mosque, including Abdul Rahman Yasin, to park a truck bomb in the parking structure of the World Trade Center. Their plan had been simple: they’d parked a vehicle filled with homemade explosives in the parking structure beneath Tower One. They had hoped to blast loose the support foundations on one side, causing that building to fall into its twin. They had also included cyanide gas, hoping the gas would expand though the ventilation system and cause additional deaths. The explosion had injured more than one thousand people and killed six. But considering its potential, the plan had been a failure. Tower One’s foundations stood, and the heat from the explosion had burned the cyanide away. Taking the ones found at the scene of the crime, the FBI followed their connections outward and was able to track it back to the Sheik himself. Yasin had also been taken into custody, but was then mistakenly released. He’d slipped away to somewhere in the Middle East, probably Iraq. With most of the main culprits in jail, the media considered the case closed, but the World Trade Center bombing had been a wake-up call to a few entities inside the U.S. government. This led to the creation of the Counter Terrorist Unit. After capture, the Blind Sheik was also implicated in the death of Meir Kahane, the ultra-rightist Israeli rabbi.
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