On this day in 1994, four men were convicted of causing an explosion at the World Trade Center in New York when on February 26 1993, a truck bomb was detonated below the North Tower of the World Trade Center. It was originally intended to ripple through the South Tower and bring both towers down, but failed to do so. Six people were killed and more than a thousand were injured.
The brains behind the operation were terrorists including Ramzi Yousef from Kuwait, who spent time at Al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan before launching the attack in New York. It was his Uncle, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed Ali Fadden that was later to be considered the main architect behind the devastating September 11 attacks in 2001.
Days before the attack was carried out, Yousef sent letters to various New York newspapers claiming to be a member of the Liberation Army. These letters made three demands: an end to all United States aid to Israel, an end to United States diplomatic relations with Israel, and a pledge by the United States to end interference with any of the Middle East countries’ interior affairs. He later admitted that his attacks were acts of terrorism and could be justified because the “terrorism that Israel practices, which America supports, must be faced with a similar one.”
Yousef escaped to Pakistan and was only convicted in November 1997, when he was sentenced to 240 years imprisonment for his role in the bombing.