Ramzi Ahmed Yousef ( ur, , translit=''Ramzī Ahmad Yūsuf''; born 20 May 1967 or 27 April 1968) is a Pakistani convicted terrorist who was one of the main perpetrators of the

1993 World Trade Center bombing The 1993 World Trade Center bombing was a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, U.S., carried out on February 26, 1993, when a van bomb detonated below the North Tower of the complex. The urea nitrate–hydrogen gas en ...

and the bombing of Philippine Airlines Flight 434; he was also a co-conspirator in the Bojinka plot. In 1995, he was arrested by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and

U.S. Diplomatic Security Service The Diplomatic Security Service (DSS or DS) is a security and law enforcement agency that acts as the operational division of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, which is a branch of the United States Department of State. Its primary mission is ...

at a guest house in Islamabad, Pakistan, while trying to set a bomb in a doll,Targeted: Volume 1, The Evil Genius (Ramzi Yousef) (Wild Eyes Productions for the History Channel; A&E Networks) 2003 then extradited to the United States. He was tried in the

U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (in case citations, S.D.N.Y.) is a federal trial court whose geographic jurisdiction encompasses eight counties of New York State. Two of these are in New York City: New Y ...

along with two co-conspirators and was convicted of planning the Bojinka plot. He received two life sentences plus 240 years for his part in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and Bojinka plot. Yousef's maternal uncle is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, with whom he allegedly planned the Bojinka plot. Mohammed is a senior

al-Qaeda Al-Qaeda (; , ) is an Islamic extremism, Islamic extremist organization composed of Salafist jihadists. Its members are mostly composed of Arab, Arabs, but also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military ta ...

member accused of being the principal architect of the September 11 attacks in 2001. Yousef is serving his life sentences at ADX Florence, located near Florence, Colorado. He shares a cell block that is commonly referred to as "Bombers' Row" with Terry Nichols, Eric Rudolph, and, before his transfer in late 2021, Ted Kaczynski.

Early life

The name "Ramzi Yousef" is an alias. The

9/11 Commission The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission, was set up on November 27, 2002, "to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11 attacks", includin ...

later revealed that Yousef's real name is Abdul Basit Mahmoud Abdul Karim. He was born in either Iraq, Kuwait or the United Arab Emirates to parents who were both from Pakistan. His father is Mohammed Abdul Karim from Balochistan, Pakistan. His mother is believed to be the sister of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. When his family returned to Pakistan in the mid-1980s, Yousef was sent to the United Kingdom for education. In 1986, he enrolled at

Swansea Institute , students = 5,765 , undergrad = 4,520 , postgrad = 1,075 , other = 175 FE , city = Swansea , country = Wales, UK , campus = Urban , address = Mount PleasantSwansea SA1 6ED , we ...

in Wales, where he studied

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

, graduating four years later.Wallace, Charles.

Toronto Star The ''Toronto Star'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper. The newspaper is the country's largest daily newspaper by circulation. It is owned by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Torstar Corporation and part ...

, "Web of terrorism targeted US jets", May 28, 1995 He also studied at the

Oxford College of Further Education City of Oxford College is a further education college in Oxford, England. It has two campuses – the City Centre campus in Oxford city centre and the Technology Campus in Blackbird Leys, south east of Oxford city. Introduction It used to be ...

to improve his English. Yousef left the United Kingdom after completing his studies and returned to Pakistan. He began to learn bomb making in a terrorist training camp in Peshawar, before traveling to the United States in 1992.Katz, Samuel M. ''Relentless Pursuit: The DSS and the Manhunt for the Al-Qaeda Terrorists'', 2002

1993 World Trade Center bombing

The World Trade Center bombing was a terrorist attack that occurred on 26 February 1993, when a

car bomb A car bomb, bus bomb, lorry bomb, or truck bomb, also known as a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED), is an improvised explosive device designed to be detonated in an automobile or other vehicles. Car bombs can be roughly divided ...

was detonated below Tower One of the World Trade Center in New York City,

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

. The 1,500 lb (680 kg) urea nitrate- hydrogen gas enhanced device was intended to knock the North Tower ( Tower 1) into the South Tower ( Tower 2), to bring both towers down and kill thousands of people. It failed to do so, but killed six civilians and injured 1,042, including 919 civilians (including an EMS worker), 88

firefighter A firefighter is a first responder and rescuer extensively trained in firefighting, primarily to extinguish hazardous fires that threaten life, property, and the environment as well as to rescue people and in some cases or jurisdictions also ...

s, and 35 police officers. Ramzi Yousef sent a letter to '' The New York Times'' after the bombing that expressed his motive:

We are, the fifth battalion in the Liberation Army, declare our responsibility for the explosion on the mentioned building. This action was done in response for the American political, economical, and military support to Israel, the state of terrorism, and to the rest of the dictator countries in the region. :Our Demands Are: :1 – Stop all military, economical, and political aid to Israel. :2 – All diplomatic relations with Israel must stop. :3 – Not to interfere with any of the Middle East countries interior affairs. If our demands are not met, all of our functional groups in the army will continue to execute our missions against the military and civilian targets in and out the United States. For your own information, our army has more than hundred and fifty suicidal soldiers ready to go ahead. The terrorism that Israel practices (which is supported by America) must be faced with a similar one. The dictatorship and terrorism (also supported by America) that some countries are practicing against their own people must also be faced with terrorism. The American people must know, that their civilians who got killed are not better than those who are getting killed by the American weapons and support. The American people are responsible for the actions of their government and they must question all of the crimes that their government is committing against other people. Or they — Americans — will be the targets of our operations that could diminish them.

Arrival in United States

On 1 September 1992, Yousef entered the United States with an Iraqi passport of disputed authenticity. His companion, Ahmed Ajaj, carried multiple immigration documents, among which was a crudely falsified Swedish passport. Providing a smokescreen to facilitate Yousef's entry, Ajaj was arrested on the spot when immigration officials found bomb manuals, videotapes of suicide car bombers, and a cheat sheet on how to lie to U.S. immigration inspectors in his luggage. Directors of the American Counter-Terrorism program later tied the travel arrangements to a phone call from

Sheikh Sheikh (pronounced or ; ar, شيخ ' , mostly pronounced , plural ' )—also transliterated sheekh, sheyikh, shaykh, shayk, shekh, shaik and Shaikh, shak—is an honorific title in the Arabic language. It commonly designates a chief of a ...

Omar Abdel-Rahman, an Egyptian militant

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

preacher, to the Pakistani telephone number 810604.Benjamin, Daniel & Steven Simon. ''The Age of Sacred Terror'', 2002 Yousef was held for 72 hours and repeatedly interrogated, but

INS INS or Ins or ''variant'', may refer to: Places * Ins, Switzerland, a municipality * Creech Air Force Base (IATA airport code INS) * Indonesia, ITF and UNDP code INS Biology *'' Ins'', a New World genus of bee flies * INS, the gene for the insul ...

holding cells were overcrowded. Yousef, requesting political asylum, was given a hearing date of 9 November 1992. He told Jersey City Police that he was Abdul Basit Mahmud Abdul Karim, a Pakistani national born and brought up in Kuwait, and that he had lost his passport. On December 31, 1992, the Pakistani Consulate in New York issued a temporary passport to Abdul Basit Mahmud Abdul Karim (SAAG 484 2002). Yousef traveled around New York and New Jersey, during which time he made calls to Abdel-Rahman via cell phone. Between 3 December and 27 December 1992, he made conference calls to key numbers in

Balochistan, Pakistan Balochistan (; bal, بلۏچستان; ) is one of the four provinces of Pakistan. Located in the southwestern region of the country, Balochistan is the largest province of Pakistan by land area but is the least populated one. It shares land ...

(SAAG 484 2002). Ajaj never reclaimed the manuals and tapes, which remained at the New York office of the

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...

(FBI) after Judge Reena Raggi had ordered the materials released in December 1992.

Assembling the bomb

Yousef, aided by

Mohammed A. Salameh Mohammed A. Salameh ( ar, محمد سلامة) (born September 1, 1967 in the West Bank) is a convicted terrorist and perpetrator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He is currently serving an unknown sentence as an inmate at FCI Terre Haute ...

and Mahmud Abouhalima, began assembling the urea nitrate-fuel oil device in his Pamrapo Avenue home in

Jersey City Jersey City is the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, after Newark. During a CBS ''

60 Minutes ''60 Minutes'' is an American television news magazine broadcast on the CBS television network. Debuting in 1968, the program was created by Don Hewitt and Bill Leonard, who chose to set it apart from other news programs by using a unique styl ...

'' interview in 2002, co-conspirator Abdul Rahman Yasin said that Yousef originally wanted to bomb Jewish neighborhoods in New York City. Yasin added that after touring Crown Heights and

Williamsburg Williamsburg may refer to: Places *Colonial Williamsburg, a living-history museum and private foundation in Virginia *Williamsburg, Brooklyn, neighborhood in New York City *Williamsburg, former name of Kernville (former town), California *Williams ...

, Yousef had changed his mind. Yasin alleged that Yousef was educated in bomb-making at a training camp in Peshawar, Pakistan.

Explosion and aftermath

Yousef rented a Ryder van and on 26 February 1993, loaded it with powerful explosives. He packed four cardboard boxes into the back of the van, each containing a mixture of paper bags, newspapers, urea, and nitric acid; next to them he placed three red metal cylinders of compressed hydrogen. Four large containers of

nitroglycerin Nitroglycerin (NG), (alternative spelling of nitroglycerine) also known as trinitroglycerin (TNG), nitro, glyceryl trinitrate (GTN), or 1,2,3-trinitroxypropane, is a dense, colorless, oily, explosive liquid most commonly produced by nitrating g ...

were loaded into the center of the van with Atlas Rockmaster blasting caps connected to each. The van was driven into the garage of the World Trade Center, where it exploded. Using his Pakistani passport, Yousef escaped from the United States hours later. It is believed that he fled to Iraq and then Pakistan. As a result of the bombing, the FBI added Yousef as the 436th person on its Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list on 21 April 1993.

1993 Benazir Bhutto assassination attempt

After returning to Pakistan in February 1993, Yousef went into hiding. That summer, he allegedly took up a contract to assassinate the Prime Minister of Pakistan,

Benazir Bhutto Benazir Bhutto ( ur, بینظیر بُھٹو; sd, بينظير ڀُٽو; Urdu ; 21 June 1953 – 27 December 2007) was a Pakistani politician who served as the 11th and 13th prime minister of Pakistan from 1988 to 1990 and again from 1993 t ...

, which was initiated by members of Sipah-e-Sahaba. The plot failed when Yousef and Abdul Hakim Murad were interrupted by police outside Bhutto's residence. Yousef decided to abort the bombing and it blew up as he was trying to recover the device. He escaped and went into hiding during the investigation.

Bojinka plot

After the Iranian shrine bombing, Yousef soon began planning the Bojinka plot. It included plans to assassinate Pope John Paul II while he visited the Philippines, and to plant bombs inside several United and Delta Air Lines flights out of Bangkok. On this plot, he allegedly worked with his maternal uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

1994 Philippine Airlines Flight 434 bombing

On 11 December 1994, Yousef conducted a trial run of the plan by boarding Philippine Airlines Flight 434 from Manila to Tokyo, Japan, with a stopover in Cebu. His identity for the flight was that of an Italian man named Armaldo Forlani. As an accomplished forger, he was able to make a

counterfeit To counterfeit means to imitate something authentic, with the intent to steal, destroy, or replace the original, for use in illegal transactions, or otherwise to deceive individuals into believing that the fake is of equal or greater value tha ...

Italian passport for himself with that identity. The cabin crew for this leg of the flight later told investigators that Yousef changed seats several times during the relatively short flight, with his last seat change coming after a return from the lavatory."Bomb on Board," ''

Mayday Mayday is an emergency procedure word used internationally as a distress signal in voice-procedure radio communications. It is used to signal a life-threatening emergency primarily by aviators and mariners, but in some countries local organiza ...

'' season 3, episode 6. First aired 2005. Yousef assembled a bomb in the lavatory, set the timer to detonate four hours later, and placed it in the life vest pouch under seat 26K on the right-hand side of the fuselage.Yousef bombs Philippines Airlines Flight 434
GlobalSecurity.Org report on incident The domestic flight attendant Maria Delacruz had noticed that Yousef kept switching seats during the course of the Manila to Cebu flight, but did not warn the new cabin crew boarding at Cebu of his behavior. Yousef and 25 other passengers left the plane at Cebu, where 256 passengers and a new cabin crew boarded for the trip to Tokyo. Many passengers were Japanese people; some were coworkers traveling as part of a tour group. Airport congestion delayed the departure of Flight 434 from Cebu for 38 minutes. All of the passengers had boarded by 8:30 a.m., with the bomb having been planted around two hours earlier. PAL 434 was cleared for takeoff at 8:38 a.m. At 11:43 am, about an hour and a half from Tokyo, the bomb exploded while Flight 434 cruised on autopilot above the Japanese island of

Minami Daitō Minami (kanji 南, hiragana みなみ) is a Japanese word meaning " south". Places Japan There are several Minami wards in Japan, most of them appropriately in the south part of a city: *Minami, Tokushima, a village in Tokushima Prefectur ...

(near

Okinawa Island is the largest of the Okinawa Islands and the Ryukyu (''Nansei'') Islands of Japan in the Kyushu region. It is the smallest and least populated of the five main islands of Japan. The island is approximately long, an average wide, and has an ...

and approximately 260 miles (420 km) southwest of Tokyo). The explosion dismembered 24-year-old , a Japanese businessman occupying the seat where the bomb was placed. Ten passengers sitting in the seats in front of and behind Ikegami were also injured while one needed urgent medical care. The explosion tore out a two square-foot (0.2 m²) portion of the cabin floor into the cargo hold but leaving the fuselage of the plane intact. The airplane was spared from a deadly fiery explosion as the seat where the bomb was planted, 26K, was two rows away from the central fuel tank. The rapid expansion of energy from the bomb caused the plane to expand vertically slightly, damaging cables to the steering and aileron controls. The bomb's orientation caused the energy to be mostly absorbed by Ikegami; he was killed but the other passengers and the plane were not catastrophically damaged. The cockpit crew improvised to manipulate the plane's speed and direction by varying the engines' throttle settings. Captain Eduardo Reyes made an emergency landing at Okinawa's Naha Airport, saving 272 passengers and 20 crew. The aircraft became a crime scene under Japanese law; bomb fragments found in and around the blast zone, as well as the lower half of Ikegami's body, provided clues pointing investigators back to Manila.

Discovery by police

Yousef then returned to Manila, where he began preparing at least a dozen bombs, each with more explosive materials. Weeks before his planned attacks, a fire started in his Manila apartment, forcing him to flee the room, leaving everything behind. The fire made the apartment staff suspicious, and soon police, led by Aida Fariscal, raided the apartment and uncovered the plot. A

Philippine National Police The Philippine National Police ( fil, Pambansang Pulisya ng Pilipinas, acronymed as PNP) is the armed national police force in the Philippines. Its national headquarters is located at Camp Crame in Bagong Lipunan ng Crame, Quezon City. Current ...

raid in another Manila apartment revealed related evidence that Abdul Murad, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and Yousef had drawn up plans for flying an airplane into CIA headquarters. The information was passed on to the Federal Aviation Administration, who warned individual airlines.

1994 Imam Reza shrine bombing

1995 U.S. airliner bombing attempt

Despite the international manhunt, Yousef escaped from Manila to Pakistan. On 31 January 1995, he flew from Pakistan to Thailand and met with a South African associate Istaique Parker. Yousef told Parker to check two suitcases filled with bombs, one on a Delta Air Lines flight and another on a United Airlines flight. Both bombs were timed to blow up over populated areas of the U.S. Parker spent much of the day at the airport, but was reportedly too scared to approach the airlines with the suitcases. Finally, Parker returned to Yousef's hotel and lied that employees at the airline cargo sections were asking for passports and fingerprints, making it too risky to go ahead with the plan. Yousef, wanting to get the bombs on a plane bound for the U.S., called a friend with diplomatic immunity in Qatar who was willing to take the suitcases to London and check them on a flight to the U.S. The plan was that they would explode mid-flight and destroy the plane. Yousef planned to use the friend's diplomatic immunity to ensure the suitcases would be loaded on the plane. According to Simon Reeve's book '' The New Jackals'', the name of this friend has not been revealed, but his father is said to be a very senior politician and leading member of the establishment in Qatar (at the time, Yousef's maternal uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was living in Qatar as the guest of a Qatari cabinet official). However, there was a problem and the suitcases were not checked in. Yousef and Parker returned to Pakistan on 2 February 1995.

Arrest, conviction and prison life

Following a tip-off from Istaique Parker, on 7 February 1995, Agents of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Special Agents of the

raided room #16 in the Su-Casa Guest House in Islamabad, Pakistan, and captured Yousef before he could move to Peshawar. Parker was paid $2 million under the

Rewards for Justice Program The Rewards for Justice Program (RFJ) is the counterterrorism and counterintelligence platform administered by the U.S. Department of State's Diplomatic Security Service agency. The Rewards For Justice program is seeking information leading to the ...

for the information leading to Yousef's capture. During the raid, agents found Delta and United Airlines flight schedules and bomb components in children's toys. Yousef had chemical burns on his fingers. Yousef was sent to a

federal prison A federal prison is operated under the jurisdiction of a federal government as opposed to a state or provincial body. Federal prisons are used for convicts who violated federal law (U.S., Mexico), inmates considered dangerous (Brazil), or those s ...

in New York City and held there until his trial. On 5 September 1996, Yousef and two co-conspirators were convicted for their role in the Bojinka plot and were sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Kevin Duffy to life in prison without parole. On 12 November 1997, Yousef was found guilty of masterminding the 1993 bombing, and on 8 January 1998, Judge Duffy found Yousef guilty of plotting a "seditious conspiracy" to bomb the World Trade Center and sentenced Yousef to life plus 240 years in prison for both bombings. He also recommended that Yousef's entire sentence be served in

solitary confinement Solitary confinement is a form of imprisonment in which the inmate lives in a single cell with little or no meaningful contact with other people. A prison may enforce stricter measures to control contraband on a solitary prisoner and use additi ...

. During the 1998 trial, Yousef said:

You keep talking also about collective punishment and killing innocent people to force governments to change their policies; you call this terrorism when someone would kill innocent people or civilians in order to force the government to change its policies. Well, when you were the first one who invented this terrorism.

You were the first one who killed innocent people, and you are the first one who introduced this type of terrorism to the history of mankind when you dropped an atomic bomb which killed tens of thousands of women and children in Japan and when you killed over a hundred thousand people, most of them civilians, in Tokyo with fire bombings. You killed them by burning them to death. And you killed civilians in Vietnam with chemicals as with the so-called Orange agent. You killed civilians and innocent people, not soldiers, innocent people every single war you went. You went to wars more than any other country in this century, and then you have the nerve to talk about killing innocent people.

And now you have invented new ways to kill innocent people. You have so-called economic embargo which kills nobody other than children and elderly people, and which other than Iraq you have been placing the economic embargo on Cuba and other countries for over 35 years. ... The Government in its summations and opening statement said that I was a terrorist. Yes, I am a terrorist and I am proud of it. And I support terrorism so long as it was against the United States Government and against Israel, because you are more than terrorists; you are the one who invented terrorism and using it every day. You are liars, butchers, and hypocrites.New York Times, January 9, 1998.

Duffy responded:

Ramzi Yousef, you claim to be an Islamic militant. Of all the persons killed or harmed in some way by the World Trade Center bomb, you cannot name one who was against you or your cause. You did not care, just so long as you left dead bodies and people hurt. Ramzi Yousef, you are not fit to uphold Islam. Your God is death. Your God is not Allah ... You weren't seeking conversions. The only thing you wanted to do was to cause death. Your God is not Allah. You worship death and destruction. What you do, you do not for Allah; you do it only to satisfy your own twisted sense of ego. You would have others believe that you are a soldier, but the attacks on civilization for which you stand convicted here were sneak attacks which sought to kill and maim totally innocent people ... You, Ramzi Yousef, came to this country pretending to be an Islamic fundamentalist, but you cared little or nothing for Islam or the faith of the Muslims. Rather, you adored not Allah, but the evil that you yourself have become. And I must say that as an apostle of evil, you have been most effective.

Yousef is held at the high-security Supermax prison ADX Florence in Florence, Colorado. The handcuffs Ramzi Yousef wore when he was captured in Pakistan are displayed at the FBI Museum in Washington, D.C. His Federal Prisoner number is: 03911–000.

Connection to Osama bin Laden

In 1997,

Osama bin Laden Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (10 March 1957 – 2 May 2011) was a Saudi-born extremist militant who founded al-Qaeda and served as its leader from 1988 until Killing of Osama bin Laden, his death in 2011. Ideologically a Pan-Islamism ...

said during an interview that he did not know Yousef, but claimed to know Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is the mastermind behind the

September 11, 2001 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial ...

and Yousef's uncle. According to the

, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said under interrogation that "Yousef was not a member of

and that Yousef never met bin Laden." Some authors, however, have made note of a stronger link between Yousef and bin Laden.