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- <text id=93TT1146>
- <title>
- Mar. 15, 1993: A Clue Almost Too Good to Be True
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1993
- Mar. 15, 1993 In the Name of God
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- THE WEEK, Page 16
- NATION
- A Clue Almost Too Good to Be True
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p>Investigators nail a suspect in the World Trade Center bombing
- </p>
- <p> Call it forensic fortuity. Days before they even hoped to
- reach the bottom of the crater dug out by a terrorist bomb at New
- York City's World Trade Center, law-enforcement technicians
- happened on a twisted shard from a van frame. It contained a
- traceable part of a vehicle ID number, leading to a van-lease
- paper trail in New Jersey and to a suspect. Four days later, FBI
- agents arrested Mohammed A. Salameh, 25, a Jordanian national
- of Palestinian descent residing illegally in the U.S., and
- charged him with taking part in the bombing. Five people died
- and more than 1,000 were injured in what a federal prosecutor
- labeled "the single most destructive act of terrorism ever
- committed on American soil."
- </p>
- <p> Salameh's connection to the destroyed van was firm: he had
- not only shown ID when renting it but also, claiming theft,
- later tried to retrieve a $400 deposit on the vehicle. Also,
- authorities said, they found manuals on circuitry and materials
- used in bomb building at the address Salameh gave to the rental
- company.
- </p>
- <p> The question of who else was involved was still murky.
- Salameh attended a Jersey City mosque often led in worship by
- Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, a Muslim fundamentalist who was
- implicated and later acquitted in the 1981 assassination of
- Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. One of Sheik Omar's followers is
- serving a seven-to-22-year sentence in connection with the 1990
- murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York City.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
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