Yousef, Ramzi Ahmed (1968–)

aka Abdul Basit Mahmoud Abdul Karim

Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the convicted mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was part of one of the most ambitious terrorist conspiracies discovered to date, including a thwarted plot to blow up a dozen U.S. airliners over the Pacific Ocean.

While New York City struggled to piece together what happened on February 26, 1993, when a truck bomb exploded in an underground garage in the World Trade Center, Yousef, the man who had orchestrated the plot, was bound for Pakistan. He left behind the small gang of men he had recruited for the bombing—Mohammad Salameh, Mahmud Abouhalima, Nidal Ayyad, and Ahmad Ajaj—who were quickly tried and convicted for their roles in the bombing. As the defense attorneys in the trial would later suggest, these men were less Yousef's fellow conspirators than his dupes. Yousef, some suggest, had ...