On February 26, 1993, there was a massive explosion in the parking garage beneath the World Trade Center in New York. It made a 100-foot hole several stories above and below the blast. Six people were killed. A thousand others were injured, many seriously.

The FBI and New York’s Joint Terrorism Task Force were incredibly lucky. They quickly found out who did it and why. First, they found the Vehicle ID Number on the wreckage of the Ryder rental truck that held the bomb. Second, the perpetrators contacted police to report that the van they had rented was stolen. They did that to recover their $400 deposit. All the perpetrators were quickly identified. Their apartments were searched and bomb-making evidence was found.

That is why we know that the perpetrators were all followers of Abdel-Rahman, “the Blind Sheikh.”

The Blind Sheikh was born in Egypt in 1938. During the 1950s and 1960s, he embraced the Wahabi or Salafi interpretation of Islam. He preached that Islam was at its peak when it was led by Muhammad, his companions, and the first three generations of his followers 1,400 years ago. That was when Islam conquered the Middle East, Egypt, North Africa, and Spain in less than a hundred years.

The Blind Sheikh urged Muslims to return to that original way or “deen” of Muhammad. That included rejecting the values of Jews, Christians, Hindus, and the modern world. It also included waging constant holy war or jihad against them.

This is the doctrine of Muslim Brotherhoods in Egypt and throughout the Middle East. Hamas was founded as a “wing” of that movement.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the Blind Sheikh preached against the secular regime of Egypt’s Gamel Abdul Nasser. During the 1970s, he issued a fatwa calling for the murder of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. The Blind Sheikh was accused of causing Sadat’s murder in 1981 and jailed for three years. Although acquitted, he was expelled from Egypt. He then went to Afghanistan where he worked closely with Osama Bin Ladin in creating Al Qaeda. In 1990, the Blind Sheikh traveled to New York City to get funding and support for radical Muslims who were fighting the Russians in Afghanistan.

Although the Blind Sheikh was on the terrorist watch list, he got a green card to legally stay in the United States. He set up a mosque in Brooklyn, New York and preached there and around the country. 

During this time, the Blind Sheikh issued a fatwa that declared it lawful to rob banks and kill Jews in the U.S. His sermons condemned Americans as the "descendants of apes and pigs who have been feeding from the dining tables of the Zionists, Communists, and colonialists". He called on Muslims to assail the West, "cut the transportation of their countries, tear it apart, destroy their economy, burn their companies, eliminate their interests, sink their ships, shoot down their planes, kill them on the sea, air, or land."

In 1990, followers of the Blind Sheikh murdered Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York. Then in February 1993, the World Trade Center was attacked. They did it so that one tower would topple into the other and kill 20,000 Americans.

One of the Blind Sheikh’s followers involved in this plot was Ramzi Ahmed Yousef. He fled to Pakistan, but was quickly arrested. An FBI agent named Chuck Stern from Atlantic City was sent there to bring him back.

During the 44-hour flight back to New York, Stern engaged Yousef in long conversations. From those conversations and further investigation, Stern learned that Yousef’s group had been working with engineers to find out how to create an explosion powerful enough to bring down the World Trade towers. 

Stern also learned that Yousef’s group had been working on plans to hijack planes and crash them. In 1994, Islamic terrorists hijacked an Air France passenger plane with plans of using it to destroy the Eifel Tower in Paris.

For years, Chuck Stern and John O’Neill, another FBI agent from Atlantic City, tried to warn the FBI of these threats of future attacks against the World Trade Center. Both were ignored. During August of 2001, O’Neill was forced out of the FBI because of his criticism of the agency. O’Neill then became head of security at the World Trade Center. He was killed there on September 11, 2001. He was leading people to safety in the South Tower when it collapsed.

Every September 11, we have many events to remember that horrible day. However, we must also remember who attacked us, why they attacked us, and what we must do to defeat them. That means also remembering the first attack of February 26, 1993 and the events surrounding it.

Image: Eric Ascalon