Spiritual Leader? Or Terror Instigator? : Sheik Abdul Rahman is indicted as a central figure in World Trade Center bombing plot

Until this week Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman was known to Americans primarily as the spiritual adviser to a group of Muslim fundamentalists who stand charged with last February’s bomb attack on New York’s World Trade Center. Now, six months to the day after the explosion that killed six, wounded more than a thousand and exposed a much larger alleged terrorist plot against U.S. government and civilian targets as well as the U.N. headquarters building, Abdul Rahman has been indicted as a central figure in that deadly plot. Along with three others the cleric has also been charged with conspiracy to murder President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.

Abdul Rahman, already in federal custody while appealing a deportation order, is identified in the indictment as a leader who “provided instructions (to his followers) regarding whether particular acts of terrorism were permissible or forbidden . . . and undertook to protect the organization from infiltration by law enforcement organizations.” On that latter point he was less than successful. An Egyptian-born federal informant was able to penetrate the close-knit group around the radical preacher and provide key information to authorities, much of it on audiotape and videotape. Abdul Rahman’s indictment is based in part on transcripts of many hours of those tapes.

The investigation of the conspiracy and the case against Abdul Rahman have involved both great urgency and great sensitivity. The urgency stemmed from a need to foil further planned terrorist actions--a raid in New York in June interrupted fresh bomb-making activities by eight men who are now under arrest--while the need for sensitivity arose from Abdul Rahman’s standing with a certain group of fundamentalists in both Egypt and the United States. Federal officials clearly wanted to be sure of their evidence before moving against the prominent religious figure and others whose indictments have just been unsealed. Was the conspiracy broader still? Hints of involvement by at least one foreign government suggest that it was. What remains to be seen now is how much the U.S. government is ready to reveal.