Free Republic

When Jihad Came to America by Andrew C. McCarthy On May 2 and 3, 1990, the U.S. embassy in Cairo alerted its counterpart in Khartoum that Egypt’s “leading radical,” Omar Abdel Rahman, was on his way to Sudan. Warning that his ultimate plan might be to seek exile in the United States, the Cairo embassy asked its colleagues to pass along any information they might learn about his activities on Sudanese soil. What did U.S. officials already know about Abdel Rahman in 1990? As the 9/11 Commission would later determine, they knew that he had been arrested repeatedly in Egypt...

A Staten Island mailman who was a follower of the blind terror sheik tracked down confidential addresses of FBI agents and prosecutors pursuing Al Qaeda, according to court records and federal sources. Ahmed Sattar, described by federal prosecutors as a point man for a major terror group in America, was spotted by one federal agent near his home. The agent moved his family from the area.Sattar also was put on the federal payroll, receiving thousands of dollars to be a paralegal for Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman during his 1995 terror trial, government officials said.Even though federal investigators became suspicious of...

Ever since the horrific public assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane at the Marriott Hotel in New York City in 1990, there has been a small, yet vocal group of individuals trying to get certain US authorities - both state and federal - to pay attention to his murder. Their many entreaties both for personal justice and for a wider investigation fell on deaf ears. Nonetheless, the ramifications from the inaction of these US authorities can no longer be ignored. This small group's personal pain at the rabbi's cold-blooded assassination fueled their initial anguished pleas. However, there was much more underlying...

FLORENCE, Colo. -- Three men convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing sent letters from the Supermax federal prison in Colorado that are suspected of being used by a Spanish terror cell to recruit suicide bombers, NewsChannel 4's Jonathan Dienst reported Monday. Letters from one of those men, Mohammed Salameh were found on Mohamed Achraf, one of 17 people charged in October in Spain for an alleged plot to blow up that country's National Court, the network reported, citing confidential documents from a Spanish court. One of the letters to Achraf, the alleged leader of the plot, reads: "Oh...

NEW YORK -- Civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart was sentenced to 28 months in prison in federal court in Manhattan Monday. She was convicted of providing support to terrorists by helping a jailed Egyptian sheik communicate with his followers on the outside. Before sentencing, her lawyer told the judge that any prison sentence for Stewart would be a death sentence because of her serious health problems. Stewart pleaded with the judge to allow her to live out the rest of her life "productively, lovingly, righteously.'' Assistant US Attorney Andrew Dember rejected defense suggestions that Stewart's conduct was judged differently after9-11. "This case...

1993 World Trade Center bombers exhort jihad in letters. It was 12:18 p.m. on Feb. 26, 1993, lunch time, when the van exploded. The massive bomb rattled the World Trade Center, leaving a giant crater in the underground garage. Six people were killed and more than 1,000 were wounded. At the time, it was the worst act of terrorism ever committed on American soil. Three Islamic extremists were among those convicted; each sentenced to more than 100 years in prison. Former prosecutor Andy McCarthy convicted others involved in the attack. "It's difficult to imagine people who are more evil or...