Yasin, Abdul Rahman (1960–)

aka Abdul Rahman Said Yasin, Aboud Yasin, Abdul Rahman S. Taha, Abdul Rahman S. Taher

U.S.-born Abdul Rahman Yasin is the only suspect in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center who has escaped U.S. officials.

Witnesses at the bombing trial of the other defendants said that they saw Yasin meet many times with fellow conspirators. Days before the attack, convicted bomber Mohammad Salameh rented a Ryder van in Jersey City, New Jersey. The conspirators then filled the vehicle with 1,200 pounds of explosives and drove the van to the World Trade Center, parking it in an underground garage. The bomb exploded at 12:18 P.M. on February 26, 1993, killing six people and injuring about 1,000.

Federal agents found Yasin in Salameh's apartment less than a week after the attack and questioned him. He took authorities to the garage apartment in Jersey City that had been rented by Salameh. Prosecutors in the attack trial often referred to the apartment as a makeshift bomb laboratory. Here the conspirators had mixed the chemicals for the bomb, made telephone calls, and received mail. After Yasin cooperated as an informant, U.S. authorities released him. On March 5, Yasin fled to Jordan. According to press reports, he is now in Baghdad.

In 1994, a New York court convicted four men, all followers of Egyptian Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, of various roles in the bombing. Rahman himself was later charged in a larger conspiracy and is serving a life sentence. In 1995, officials captured Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the alleged mastermind behind the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center; he was convicted by a New York court in 1997.