Abdul Rahman Yasin

Abdul Rahman Yasin, a U.S. citizen of Iraqi parents, lived in the same apartment building in New Jersey as Ramzi Yousef, the central conspirator in the first World Trade Center attack. He claims Yousef talked him into participation as revenge for the first Gulf War and U.S. support of Israel. It is quite possible he would not be on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist list if Yousef had not been his neighbor. He reportedly helped Yousef assemble the car bomb that was left in the underground parking garage of Tower One on February 26, 1993. The FBI picked him up within a week on March 4th. He was so cooperative, the FBI released him the next day, and he immediately returned to Iraq. He was last seen at his father’s house in Baghdad in 1994. His whereabouts are now unknown.

I was sitting in my small basement studio on 7th Street working on my illustration portfolio in hopes of more creative employment, when news came over the radio that there had been a bombing at the World Trade Center. Gene, my cousin’s husband, worked in that building as an architect for the Port Authority. As I listened to the news, I didn’t think about who might have set the bombs or why. I thought about Gene, close to 60 years old, very thin and very tall coming down many, many stairs with thousands of panicked people as they all evacuated the building. In the subsequent weeks and years, the unfolding of the plot by the FBI was as enjoyable as a soap opera with the sordid apartments in New Jersey, the international connections, the blind cleric.