Omar Abdel-Rahman, Egyptian Muslim leader and convicted terrorist, Died at 78

Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman was born on May 3, 1938 and died onFebruary 18, 2017.

He was commonly known in the United States as “The Blind Sheikh”,

He was a blind Egyptian Muslim leader.

He served a life sentence at the Federal Medical Center, Butner in Butner, North Carolina, United States.

He was formerly a resident of New York City, Abdel-Rahman and nine others were convicted of seditious conspiracy, which requires only that a crime be planned, not that it necessarily be attempted.

Abdel-Rahman’s prosecution grew out of investigations of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

He was accused of being the leader of Al-Jama’a al-Islamiyya (also known as “The Islamic Group”), a militant Islamist movement in Egypt that is considered a terrorist organization by the United States and Egyptian governments.

Known to be responsible for many acts of violence, including the November 1997 Luxor massacre, in which 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians were killed.

Omar Abdel-Rahman passed away at 78 years old.