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 taken an existing small-scale bombing conspiracy and elevated it to a plan to topple the Twin Towers.

Yousef's activities following the bombing are basically unknown, though he is believed to have stayed in a safe house in Quetta, Pakistan, for some time. By July 1993, authorities believe that militant Islamic forces had approached Yousef to coordinate and carry out an assassination plot against Benazir Bhutto, a candidate for prime minister of Pakistan, before the October 1993 elections.

[Page 416]Yousef used two long-time associates, Abdul Hakim Murad and Abdul Shakur, for this plot. In late July, the three men allegedly went to Bhutto's residence to plant a bomb near her driveway. While setting the bomb, part of the detonator exploded in Yousef's face, injuring one of his eyes. The bomb itself did not explode, but the men abandoned the bomb and rushed Yousef to a hospital. Allegedly, Yousef again failed to assassinate Bhutto when a gun to be used by a sniper was not delivered in time for one of her public addresses.

By spring 1994, Yousef had headed to Thailand, where he coordinated a plot to bomb the Israeli embassy in Bangkok. On March 11, 1994, a stolen van loaded with a bomb drove toward the embassy. Within blocks, however, the van was in an accident and the driver fled. Authorities discovered the bomb, still undetonated, days after the van was impounded.

Three months later, Yousef arranged the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Mashhad, Iran, in which 26 people died. Yousef then left for the Philippines where he trained members of Abu Sayyaf, a militant Islamic group, in the use of explosives. Because of his expertise, they reportedly called him “the chemist.” At the time, Osama bin Laden was financing Abu Sayyaf. Through the group, it is believed that bin Laden requested that Yousef assassinate U.S. president Bill Clinton during his trip to the Philippines on November 12, 1994. The attempt was a logistical nightmare and proved too difficult for Yousef. Yousef turned his attention to a plot he had been working on since arriving in Manila, called “Project Bojinka” (Serbo-Croatian for “loud explosion”).