Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman

The Justice Department has decided to arrest Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, the fiery cleric whose followers are charged with the World Trade Center bombing and with planning the destruction of the United Nations and other New York City landmarks, sources said Thursday. He is to be taken into custody for violating immigration laws. The decision was made jointly by the Justice Department, the U.S. attorney in New York and the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The government urged a federal judge not to throw out charges against a defense attorney they say helped a militant cleric direct terrorism from prison, according to court papers released Monday. The Manhattan U.S. attorney's office said U.S. free speech rights did not protect Lynne Stewart, who represented Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman at the 1995 trial in which he was convicted of plotting a "war of urban terrorism" that included the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

President Hosni Mubarak's spokesman denied that Mubarak had claimed that a radical Egyptian cleric whose followers are charged in the World Trade Center bombing is a paid CIA agent. The government newspaper Al Gomhouriya on Thursday had quoted Mubarak as saying that Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman works for the CIA. Mohammed Abdel Moneim, the president's press secretary, said the story was erroneous. The newspaper printed a front-page retraction.

He is blind, has diabetes, asthma and a heart ailment and is nearly 60 years old. But the U.S. government is treating Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman as if he were a criminal about to escape, keeping him in isolation in federal prison and denying him communication privileges afforded most other inmates. The restrictions on Rahman, convicted in 1995 as the leader of a conspiracy to bomb New York landmarks, follow prison rules Atty. Gen. Janet Reno issued last year for terrorists.

A lawyer for radical cleric Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, linked to a number of suspects in the World Trade Center bombing, filed notice that she will be appealing a government deportation order. The attorney, Barbara Nelson, said she expects the 2nd Court of Appeals to hear arguments in the case in about two months. A lower court judge had ruled last week that the government had acted properly in ordering the cleric deported for allegedly lying on his immigration papers in 1990.

The government is spending about $12,000 to build a two-room jail "suite" for Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman. Besides the standard bed, sink and toilet, Abdul Rahman will have his own shower and a conference room with table and chairs in New York City's Metropolitan Correctional Center, according to jails spokeswoman Sandra Burks. Authorities cited security reasons for the construction. Abdul-Rahman, 55, of Jersey City, N.J., is accused of masterminding a terrorist conspiracy that included the Feb.

Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, the radical Egyptian cleric whose mosque in New Jersey has been a site of worship by suspects in the New York World Trade Center bombing, is on a visit to Southern California, where he is a guest in a West Covina home, an associate said Tuesday.

Radical sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, who is being held in an Upstate New York prison on immigration charges, was admitted to a hospital Tuesday after his blood sugar level rose to abnormal levels, his lawyer said. The 55-year-old blind cleric, who suffers from diabetes, was detained Friday after a 23-hour standoff with the FBI and the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Forty-three Islamic radicals opened their terrorism trial Tuesday by professing allegiance to an extremist cleric who preaches at the mosque where a Palestinian suspected in the World Trade Center bombing worships. Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, a blind preacher who has been living in the United States in self-imposed exile for nearly three years, has denounced the bombing in New York, which killed five people and injured more than 1,000 on Feb. 26.

It was ironic that Alexander Cockburn's column attacking Israel for blocking the flow of money donated in the United States to Palestinians for humanitarian causes appeared on the same day (Column Left, March 4) when two Islamic fundamentalists were arrested for bombing the World Trade Center in New York. Cockburn based his claim on the arrest of three former Palestinians living in the U.S. who were found distributing thousands of dollars in the West Bank and Gaza. These "tourists" gave money to Islamic fundamentalist groups responsible for killing hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians alike.

Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric charged with plotting to bomb the United Nations and other Manahttan landmarks was hospitalized Thursday suffering from pneumonia. Abdul Rahman, 56, who has diabetes and heart disease, had been undergoing treatment for the pneumonia in prison where he and 12 other defendants are awaiting trial. But after his condition worsened, physicians decided it was necessary he receive intensified therapy and diagnostic tests. Emanuel A.

Scheduled to face trial in two months, the principal defendant in the next U.S. terrorism case is blind, has heart trouble, suffers from diabetes, does not speak English and has no legal training. Yet he insists on serving as his own defense lawyer. What chance does radical Muslim Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman have of succeeding against charges that he was the spiritual leader of a group of 13 Islamic militants bent on blowing up the United Nations building and other Manhattan landmarks?

A federal judge told prosecutors and defense lawyers Thursday that he might throw out part of the criminal case against Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman and 14 others for allegedly conspiring to bomb the World Trade Center and other New York facilities and to assassinate political leaders. At a pretrial hearing, U.S.

The government is spending about $12,000 to build a two-room jail "suite" for Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman. Besides the standard bed, sink and toilet, Abdul Rahman will have his own shower and a conference room with table and chairs in New York City's Metropolitan Correctional Center, according to jails spokeswoman Sandra Burks. Authorities cited security reasons for the construction. Abdul-Rahman, 55, of Jersey City, N.J., is accused of masterminding a terrorist conspiracy that included the Feb.

Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, speaking out for the first time in open court in his own defense, emphatically declared Friday that he is innocent of plotting to bomb the United Nations, three other New York targets and planning the assassination of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. "All I know is I had nothing to do with this case other than I am a cleric who prays in a mosque," Abdul Rahman told a federal judge during a hearing to change his lawyer. "I did not speak, I did not give orders.

For weeks, federal investigators privately voiced their doubts about the quality of the evidence supporting the government's case against Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, the blind cleric accused of leading a loose-knit group of Islamic terrorists. But in the end, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno overcame her own misgivings, as well as those of her subordinates, and concluded that the alleged conspiracy was "a case that had to be prosecuted," according to one of several sources familiar with the matter.

Under the guise of a scholarly explanation, Satloff has delivered yet another thinly disguised Zionist editorial. The fact is that his supposed expertise on Arab extremism has been used to dupe the U.S. public. Satloff would have us believe that large segments of the Arab populace are out to wantonly destroy the vestiges of Western culture in the Middle East, regardless of the cost in human lives. Many of us less-biased Westerners believe that the root cause of the violence lies predominantly in the corrupt support by Western politicians of economically motivated Zionism.

Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric who is linked to several figures charged in a New York terror campaign and has been fighting a U.S. deportation order, asked the Justice Department on Wednesday if it would allow him to leave for Afghanistan. The move is an abrupt about-face in Abdul Rahman's two-year-long attempt to stave off deportation. But the 55-year-old cleric, now in the federal prison in Otisville, N.Y.

Their hands manacled behind them, radical Muslim Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman and 14 of his followers stood in a heavily guarded courtroom Thursday and pleaded not guilty to conspiring "to levy a war of urban terrorism against the United States."

Radical Muslim Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman was indicted Wednesday on federal charges of plotting to blow up the World Trade Center, U.N. headquarters and key transportation arteries into Manhattan, as well as planning to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and to commit other terrorist acts. The charges constitute the first criminal action against the blind cleric in connection with U.S.