Title: Message
ONE OF FBI MOST - WANTED TERRORISTS SAYS JEWISH AREAS WERE
THE ORIGINAL TARGET OF 1993 WTC BOMBERS
Fri May 31 2002 15:51:47
ET
One of the FBI’s most-wanted terrorists says that Brooklyn’s Jewish
neighborhoods were the original targets of the men convicted of bombing the
World Trade Center in 1993. Abdul Rahman Yasin, in his first interview, says
fellow bombers Ramzi Yousef and Mohammed Salameh decided instead to attack New
York’s Twin Towers because they believed most of its occupants were
Jewish. Yasin, who was indicted in the bombing but escaped, was
interviewed by Lesley Stahl in an Iraqi installation near Baghdad last Thursday
(23). Her report will be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, June 2 (7:00-8:00 PM,
ET/PT) on the CBS Television
Network.
“[Yousef] told me, ‘I want to blow up Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn,’” Yasin
tells Stahl. But after scouting Crown Heights and Williamsburg, Yasin says
Yousef had a better idea. “Ramzi Yousef told us to go to the World trade Center…
‘I have an idea we should do one big explosion rather than do small ones in
Jewish neighborhoods,’” Yasin says the terrorist
said.
They figured the World Trade Center would serve as a more efficient
target. “The majority of people who work in the World Trade Center are
Jews,” says Yasin.
Yasin, 40, says he is sorry for what he did and that the bombers, who he says he
met for the first time while living in a Jersey City apartment building, talked
him into it. “[Yousef and Salameh] used to tell me how Arabs suffered a
great deal and that we have to send a message that this is not right…to revenge
for my Palestinian brothers and my brothers in Saudi Arabia,” Yasin tells
Stahl. He adds that they also prodded him about being an Iraqi who should
avenge the defeat of Iraq in the Gulf War. Yasin confirms that Yousef was
the maker of the bomb used in the attack and that Yousef learned the process in
a terrorist camp in Peshawar, Pakistan, before entering the U.S. “I knew that
after …working with
them.”
60 MINUTES has independently confirmed that the man interviewed is, indeed,
Yasin, whose picture is on the FBI Web site along with Osama bin Laden, one of
President Bush’s 22 most-wanted terrorists. The FBI is offering a $25
million reward for information leading to Yasin’s arrest.
END
http://www.drudgereport.com/flash2.htm