Abdul Rahman Yasin
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Abdul Rahman Yasin (Arabic: عبد الرحمن يس ) (born April 10, 1960- ) helped make the bombs used in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing attack. Yasin is of Iraqi heritage, having grown up in Baghdad, Iraq. The history of his childhood and early adult life in Iraq up until 1992 would be the most direct connection possibly implicating the Saddam Hussein regime of Iraq to the 1993 attack in Manhattan, which occurred on the 2nd anniversary (February 26) of the retreat of Iraqi forces from Kuwait, thus ending the Gulf War. However, the United States government has not publicly tied the Hussein regime explicitly to Yasin's indictment for the 1993 attack.
He is also known as Abdel Rahman Yasin, Abdul Rahman Said Yasin, Aboud Yasin, Abdul Rahman S. Taha, and Abdul Rahman S. Taher.
An American citizen of Iraqi heritage, Yasin was born in Bloomington, Indiana, USA, where his father came to study for a PhD. Shortly, after his birth, Yasin's family moved back to Iraq.
[edit] Arrival in United States, 1992
On June 21, 1992 Yasin was able to use his American birth citizenship to obtain a US passport from the U.S. embassy in Amman, Jordan, and thus enter the United States.
Recruited by Ramzi Yousef, he had acid burns on his legs and jeans from bomb chemicals.
Soon following investigation of the attack on Feb. 26, 1993, Yasin was picked up by the FBI on March 4, 1993, the same day as the arrest of Mohammed A. Salameh, in a sweep of sites associated with Salameh. Yasin was found in the apartment in Jersey City, New Jersey, that he was sharing with his mother.
Yasin was taken to New Jersey FBI headquarters in Newark, where he was reportedly very cool and cooperative. Agents had Yasin retrace where and how the WTC bomb had been built in New York and New Jersey.
One of seven men indicted for 1993 WTC attack, with full knowledge and approval of US Attorneys involved in the case, Yasin was set free and encouraged to leave the US.
Yasin said he was released after giving agents names and addresses, and went to Iraq.
[edit] Return to Iraq, 1993
On the very next day, March 5, 1993, Yasin boarded Royal Jordanian flight 262 to Amman, Jordan, the same plane Salameh had failed to catch a week earlier. From Amman, Abdul Rahman Yasin went on to Baghdad. An ABC news stringer saw him there in 1994, outside his father's house, and learned from neighbors that he worked for the Iraqi government.
In Baghdad, Iraq, Yasin lived freely for at least a year. Pointing to Saddam Hussein regime's involvement in World Trade Center bombing was "evidence" it gave money and housing to Yasin. The Iraqi government later claimed he was arrested and put in prison (see CBS Stahl interview, below).
On Oct. 10, 2001 Yasin appeared on the initial list of the FBI's top 22 Most Wanted Terrorists, which was released to the public by President Bush.
On several occasions, Iraq offered to turn Yasin over to the US government in exchange for lifting UN economic sanctions. Tariq Aziz, spokesman of Iraq, claimed that in the 1990's all Iraq wanted in return was a signed statement that Iraq had handed over Yasin. But reportedly the statement presented to the U.S. at the time contained lengthy wording essentially exonerating Iraqi involvement in the 1993 WTC attack. Nevertheless, Kenneth Pollack of the State Department stated that there was no CIA information tying Iraq into the 1993 WTC bombing.
With Yasin reportedly being held as a prisoner in Hussein's Iraq, Leslie Stahl of CBS interviewed him there for a segment on 60 Minutes on May 23, 2002 (see below). Yasin appeared in prison pajamas and handcuffs. It was claimed that Iraq had held Yasin prisoner on the outskirts of Baghdad since 1994. Stahl also interviewed US Attorneys who acknowledged they had agreed to release Yasin to Iraq. (CBS 2002 Briley 2005)
Yasin is believed to still be in Iraq.
