Subway Suicide Bombing Plot

In the early-morning hours of July 31, 1997, police, acting on a tip, raided a Brooklyn, New York, apartment, capturing two Palestinian men who were allegedly planning an attack on the Atlantic Avenue subway and Long Island Railroad stations.

At 10:45 P.M. on July 29, 1997, Abdel Rahman Rosabbah, a recent immigrant from Egypt, approached two Long Island Railroad police officers and tried to explain, in broken English, that friends of his were plotting to kill people on the subway. When officers heard the word “bomb,” they brought Rosabbah to the 88th Precinct, in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

Just over 24 hours later, at approximately 4:30 A.M. on July 31, members of New York's Emergency Services Unit stormed into a shabby two-floor apartment [Page 350]building on 4th Avenue, near the Gowanus section of Park Slope. When the officers entered a bedroom, 24-year-old Gazi Ibrahim ...