JEDDAH: Omar Abdel Rahman, the Egyptian “hate preacher” who was convicted of conspiracy in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, died Saturday in a North Carolina prison, authorities said. He was 78.
The blind preacher’s son Ammar said his family had received a phone call in Egypt from a US representative saying his father had died.
Analysts said his death will not have a great impact on radical groups. “He was an old man and belonged to a different generation of radicals,” Hani Nasira, a Dubai-based expert on radical groups, told Arab News. “There’s no doubt that Al-Qaeda and Daesh will try to exploit his death, but this isn’t such a big issue that will result in an outpouring of hate,” he said.
“Al-Qaeda and Daesh have enough reasons and challenges in Iraq and Syria to generate hate. Abdel Rahman was the past.” Nasira added that Abdel Rahman was merely a symbol with no organizational backbone.
Mohammed El-Shafey, a London-based veteran journalist who has extensively covered developments in radical groups, told Arab News that he had spoken to a number of Islamists and “they are all very sad and upset by the death of Abdel Rahman.”
RELATED STORY: Omar Abdel Rahman: From village along Nile to death in US federal prison
Abdel Rahman remained a spiritual leader for radical Muslims even after more than 20 years in prison.
With his long grey beard, sunglasses and red and white cap, the charismatic Abdel Rahman was the face of radical Islam in the 1980s and 1990s.
He preached a fiery brand of Islam that called for the death of people and governments he disapproved of, and the installation of an Islamic government in Egypt. His following was tied to fundamentalist killings and bomb attacks worldwide.
Abdel Rahman, who was born in a village along the Nile on May 3, 1938, lost his eyesight due to childhood diabetes, and grew up studying a Braille version of the Qur’an.
As an adult he became associated with the fundamentalist Islamic Group, and was imprisoned and accused of issuing a religious edict leading to the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, against whom he had railed for years.
A year before his Al-Qaeda followers pulled off the most destructive assault on US soil — the Sept. 11 attacks — Osama Bin Laden pledged a jihad to free Abdel Rahman from prison.
When Mohammed Mursi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, began his short-lived presidency of Egypt in 2012, he said winning the radical preacher’s freedom would be a priority.
Jihadists who attacked an Algerian oilfield and took hostages in 2013 also demanded his release.
— With input from Reuters
0 comments: