Omar Abdel-Rahman, known as 'the blind shaikh' who was convicted of conspiracy in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and of planning a broader "war of urban terrorism" in the United States, died on Saturday in a North Carolina prison, authorities said.
Abdel-Rahman, 78, died of natural causes at 9:40 am (1440 GMT) at a medical center at a federal prison compound in Butner, North Carolina, according to Greg Norton, a spokesman.
The cleric, who had diabetes and coronary artery disease, had been incarcerated at the complex for nearly 10 years, Norton said.
Earlier, the cleric's son Ammar said his family had received a phone call in Eygpt from a US representative saying his father had died.
With his long gray beard, sunglasses and red and white clerical cap, the charismatic Abdel-Rahman's following was tied to fundamentalist killings and bomb attacks around the world.
"Abdel-Rahman was at the vortex of some of the bloodiest and most consequential terrorist incidents of the 1990s - incidents that would establish the patterns of global terrorism that continue to bedevil us today,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University in Washington.
"He was a tireless and enthusiastic in projecting his message of violence and hatred,” said Hoffman, who served on the US government’s commission that reviewed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington and over Pennsylvania.
He managed to get to New York after the U.S. Embassy in Sudan granted him a tourist visa in 1990 - despite the fact that he was on the State Department's list of people with ties to terror groups.
U.S. authorities blamed a computer error for the visa, but the mistake was compounded in 1991 when Abdel-Rahman was given a green card and permanent U.S. resident status. The New York Times reported that the CIA had approved the visa application for Abdel-Rahman, who had supported the anti-Soviet mujahedin in Afghanistan during the 1980s.
U.S. authorities took action in 1992 by revoking Abdel-Rahman's green card on the grounds that he had lied about a bad check charge in Egypt and about having two wives when he entered the country.
He was facing the possibility of deportation when a truck bomb went off in the basement parking garage of the World Trade Center on Feb. 26, 1993, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000.
Four months later Abdel-Rahman was arrested and went on trial with several followers in 1995, accused of plotting a day of terror for the United States - assassinations and synchronized bombings of the U.N. headquarters, a major federal government facility in Manhattan and tunnels and a bridge linking New York City and New Jersey.
The indictment said Abdel-Rahman and his followers planned to "levy a war of urban terrorism against the United States".
The defendants were not directly charged with the 1993 World Trade Center attack but were convicted of conspiring with those who did carry out the bombing.
Abdel-Rahman's convictions also included plotting to kill Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak during a visit to the United States in 1993, a Jewish New York state legislator and a Jewish New York State Supreme Court justice.
Much of the case against Abdel-Rahman and his followers was based on video and audio recordings made with the help of a bodyguard for the sheikh who became an FBI informant. A video also showed four defendants mixing fertilizer and diesel fuel for bombs.
After a nine-month trial, the shaikh and nine followers were found guilty in October 1995 on 48 of 50 charges.
In 2006 one of Abdel-Rahman's lawyers, Lynne F. Stewart, was sentenced to 28 months in prison for helping smuggle messages from the cleric to his followers in Egypt.