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- <text id=93TT1366>
- <title>
- Apr. 05, 1993: From Egypt, with Intense Suspicion
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1993
- Apr. 05, 1993 The Generation That Forgot God
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- THE WEEK, Page 14
- NATION
- From Egypt, with Intense Suspicion
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p>A suspect in the World Trade Center bombing is flown back to
- the U.S.
- </p>
- <p> The Egyptian government knew it was going to face charges
- that it is in Uncle Sam's pocket. So it tried to pretend that
- Mahmud Abohalima asked voluntarily to go back to the U.S. In fact
- he was arrested by Egyptian security forces in a town near
- Alexandria and flown back last Wednesday to the U.S., which he
- had fled shortly after the Feb. 26 World Trade Center bombing.
- A 12-car motorcade whisked him from an upstate New York airport
- to Manhattan, where he was arraigned for allegedly aiding and
- abetting the bombing. Abohalima, a former New York City-area
- taxi driver, pleaded not guilty; his attorney charged that he
- had been tortured for 10 days by Egyptian authorities.
- Abohalima, said the lawyer, had been hung "like a shish kebab."
- </p>
- <p> Another suspect, Bilal Alkaisi, surrendered voluntarily in
- Newark, New Jersey, and was held for a bail hearing this week.
- That brings to five the number in custody and may be close to
- completing a roundup; authorities are believed to be looking for
- only one other suspect. But it scarcely completes the
- investigation. Abohalima and two of the other suspects have been
- arraigned only on general aiding and abetting charges (like
- another suspect accused of obstructing justice, they have all
- asserted innocence). Authorities have yet to spell out any
- theory of who did what: Who actually made the bomb; who drove
- the van containing it into the trade center? Abohalima has been
- described in some press reports as the mastermind, but some
- authorities view him as a bombmaking "consultant." Debate rages
- too about the motive and whether the bombers were directed by
- foreign terrorists or were just a bunch of free-lance zealots.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-