With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Mubarak, Terrorism and Their Tie

The blind sheik in charge of blowing up New York City had invited reporters to interview him one evening in 1993, so 57 of us stood in his bare living room. The floor shuddered every time another person or camera crew squeezed in. Then, for more than half an hour, the sheik, Omar Abdel Rahman, spoke at a dead sprint, in Arabic. The translators panted. From the sound of things, they apparently were able to render only about one phrase in English for every three he spoke in Arabic.

There were two words, though, that the sheik uttered dozens of times, virtually spitting them across the room, and which needed no translation:

“Hosni Mubarak.”

The press had come to ask Mr. Rahman about a group of his followers who had just been arrested for planting an enormous bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center that exploded around noon on Feb. 26, 1993, killing six.

The sheik waved off questions about the bombing. All he wanted to do was rage against Hosni Mubarak, who became president of Egypt in 1981 and was chased out of office two weeks ago by a mass popular uprising....
Read entire article at NYT