World Trade Center 1993

On Friday, February 26th 1993, a bomb blast occurred in the parking lot of the World Trade Center in New York. Eight years later, two aircrafts rammed into the World Trade Center in New York on September 11th, 2001. Both attacks targeted the same building, but the last attack finished the job by reducing both towers to rubble. The terrorist attack of 1993 brought the War on Terror to US soil first and the second attack left a warning that no terrorist plot was to be left unfinished. Historians believe that both attacks were related to each other and committed by the same organization though Al Qaeda was not a pioneer in terrorist attacks back in 1993. However, there is evidence to prove that the 1993 attack was indeed a set up for the 9/11 bombings. The debate starts at who was responsible for both attacks since there is heavy evidence of FBI involvement in the first terrorist attack. Though both attacks varied in their intensity and their method, the impact supported claims that US soil was no longer a safe haven from terrorism in this world.Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor, in April 2004 proclaimed at the 9/11 commission:“The terrorist threat to our Nation did not emerge on September 11th, 2001. Long before that day, radical, freedom-hating terrorists declared war on America and on the civilized world.”Mohammed A. Salameh was considered as the lead artist in the bombing of 1993 whose truck was apparently used to store the explosives. The FBI also namedseveral plotters in custody, including Nidal Ayyad, an engineer who had acquired chemicals for the bomb, and Mahmoud Abouhalima, who had helped mix the chemicals. Two more conspirators, Ahmed Ajaj and Ramzi Yousef, who was later declared the architect of the attack, were also to be captured by the Bureau. From all above mentioned suspects, only Ramzi Yousef escaped to Pakistan and was on the run for two years before being arrested and sentenced to life in prison. In October 1995 Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind cleric who preached at mosques in Brooklyn and Jersey City, was condemned to life for masterminding the terror campaign. The detainees of the 1993 bombings were regular visitors of the mosques in which Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman preached. Rahman’s organisation, is alleged to have associations to Osama Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network, accused of carrying out the 11th September attacks.The van packed with explosives was driven in to World Trade Center by Ramzi Yousef and Eyad Ismoil. They parked the van in the Secret Service’s section of the car park under and between New York’s largest towers, lit a 20 foot fuse and walked out of the building unnoticed. At 12:17 pm, the bomb exploded, ripping a huge hole through 3 foot of concrete, sending ash and debris everywhere. The ensuing fire choked the stairs ways with flames and smoke which blocked emergency routes for people who wished to escape in panic. The bomb cut off the emergency lighting systems and the buildings electric grid. Telephone lines, Radio Station lines and television cables were cut off and dismantled for over a week following the bomb blast. The blast shattered glass windows and created complete pandemonium. Architects assert that had the van been parked closer to the buildings foundation, Yousef would have succeeded in toppling the tower. Though the bomb had a devastating effect in the parking area, only 5 people lost their lives and several were injured.An emotional Mario Cuomo, New York’s state governor, told journalists:“We all have that feeling of being violated. No foreign people or force has ever done this to us. Until now we were invulnerable.”  The fear of the 1993 attacks soon faded of the minds of the Americans who had not yet come to terms with Islamic fundamentalism and extremist elements in the field of terrorism. While the world was following the Palestine and Israeli conflicts in Gaza, another terrorist plot was brewing in Al Qaeda networks.