'Liberate the Blind Sheik': For Obama, That Is Difficult Now

Omar Abdel-Rahman is one of two inmates held in a U.S. prison for whose liberation the perpetrators of the attack on the In Amenas gas facility are calling. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has rebutted that the U.S. does not make deals with terrorists. But “the blind sheik,” is, according to rumors, at the center of negotiations between Egypt and the U.S. over the release of Egyptian prisoners. Egyptian President Morsi, in his first speech after his election, promised that he would be committed to the liberation of the sheik.

Omar Abdel-Rahman was condemned to life imprisonment in 1995, because he was considered the instigator of the attack two years earlier on the World Trade Center of New York that left six dead and thousands wounded.

It was not the first accusation of conspiracy against the sheik. Years before, in 1981, he was accused of instigating the assassination of Egyptian President Sadat by issuing a fatwa, but he was not condemned; however, when he was released from prison in 1984 he was exiled from Egypt. Then he went to Afghanistan, where a holy war against the Soviet Union, which had invaded the country, was in progress. Guiding the mujahadeen was Osama bin Laden, with the financial backing of the U.S. After the assassination of Abdullah Azzam, Rahman assumed control of the international component of the al-Qaeda jihadists.

The year after, with the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in July of 1990, Omar Abdel-Rahman left for the U.S. with a tourist visa obtained with the good wishes of the CIA. The objective was to assume control of the resources of al-Qaeda (but some argue that until then bin Laden’s network did not exist in the U.S.) and to extend them through mosques. In those years he prayed in three different mosques: the Farooq on Atlantic Avenue, Abu Bakr on Foster Avenue in Brooklyn and the squalid al Salaam, located in an apartment on the third floor of a building in Jersey City. Of the three, it would be Abu Bakr in Brooklyn that would become the general headquarters of the most radical Islamists.

Rahman eventually aroused alarm and was added to a list of suspected terrorists, which led to the revocation of his residence permit in 1991. In 1992 he returned to the United States using a now-lost “green card” (the card for temporary residency), claiming political asylum.

After the first attack on the World Trade Center he was arrested and accused of “seditious conspiracy.” The plot against the U.S. was also to include other bombings and assassinations, which were not committed. They were heavy accusations that carried a harsh sentence.

In addition to the call for the liberation of Mokhtar Belmokhtar advanced by the terrorists who attacked the base in Algeria, perhaps one can imagine a treaty for the extradition to Egypt of Omar Abdel-Rahman. A functionary of the Obama administration has affirmed: “There is zero chance this happens.” But according to an article in Newsweek on June 22, 2012, Hani Nour Eldin, a member of the party of the “blind sheik” who was elected in the new Egyptian parliament, has been invited to Washington to talk with members of the Obama administration. Naturally the release, according even to the request of Egyptian President Morsi, would occur for reasons that are “humanitarian and for his health.”

But if anti-Western protests that took place after the appearance on YouTube of a film blaspheming Mohammed are considered by many to be a mere pretext, perhaps even to support the cause of Rahman, after the jihadists’ calls for the release of Mokhtar, the liberation of Rahman might become embarrassing for Obama. And Morsi will have to invent some other tricks to keep his promise.