In 1995 alone, there were 1,742 slayings, most of them the result of sectarian political rivalries that made parts of the city the exclusive property of one political party or another. These districts are called "no-go areas"; even police have abandoned any pretext of controlling what goes on within them.
Mohammed lived off and on in Karachi, using the city as a base from which to travel the globe. He began using the first of dozens of aliases, often posing as a Gulf businessman. At various times he told people that he was a holy-water salesman, an electronics importer and a Saudi oil sheik.
When Yousef returned to Pakistan in 1993 after the first World Trade Center bombing, he and Mohammed began assembling a team to broaden the battleground. By 1994, both men were spending months at a time in the Philippines and Malaysia, meeting like-minded men.
The events they planned were, in what would become a Mohammed signature, perversely spectacular: They would assassinate the pope, perhaps the American president, and in a stunning finale would blow up a dozen American airliners over the Pacific.
The plans were thwarted when bomb-making chemicals were ignited in a Manila apartment, leading to the discovery of their plots and the eventual arrest of fellow plotters. Yousef fled, just as he had after the first World Trade Center bombing, back to Pakistan. Mohammed had been careful; none of the other plotters even knew his name. It would be months before authorities figured out who he was and many years and thousands of deaths before they realized his significance.
Qatar: Slipping Away
Yousef wasn't so careful. Some of the other plotters had known him for years; one told police that Yousef was the same man who had planned the Trade Center bombing. A worldwide manhunt ensued and within months Yousef's whereabouts were betrayed. American and Pakistani agents stormed a hotel room in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, in February 1995 and hauled Yousef away, kicking and screaming. At least that's what another guest told a reporter.
"It was like a hurricane, a big panic," the guest said. "He was shouting: 'Why are you taking me? I am innocent! Show me papers if you are going to arrest me! Who are you?' No one listened to him. They took him without his shoes. His eyes were blindfolded, his head was covered, his arms and legs were tied."
