Omar Abdel-Rahman, the so-called "blind sheikh" convicted of plotting terror attacks in the United States in the 1990s, died Saturday in a federal prison where he was serving a life sentence. Abdel-Rahman, 78, died after suffering from diabetes and coronary artery disease, said Kenneth McKoy at the Federal Correction Complex in Butner, a North Carolina. He had been at the complex for seven years. Abdel-Rahman was a key spiritual leader for a generation of Islamic militants and became a symbol for radicals during 20 years in American prisons. Blind since infancy from diabetes, Abdel-Rahman was the leader of one of Egypt's most feared militant groups, the Gamaa Islamiya, which led a campaign of violence aimed at bringing down ex-President Hosni Mubarak. Abdel-Rahman fled Egypt to the U.S. in 1990 and began teaching in a New Jersey mosque. A circle of his followers were convicted in the Feb. 26, 1993 truck bombing of New York's World Trade Center that killed six people and injured more than 1,000 others -- eight years before al-Qaida's suicide plane hijackers brought the towers down. Abdel-Rahman was linked to the attack after other suspects were found to have frequented the New Jersey mosque where he preached. He denied involvement in the attack, but in 1995 he was convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to life in prison. Since his imprisonment, Abdel-Rahman's influence had been seen more as symbolic than that of a practical leader. His Gamaa Islamiya, which led a wave of violence in the 1990s, was crushed a decade ago, and its leaders, jailed in Egypt, declared a truce.
