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Ramzi yousef shocked by sept 11 { August 30 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://newsobserver.com/24hour/nation/story/983827p-6906407c.htmlhttp://newsobserver.com/24hour/nation/story/983827p-6906407c.html
Saturday, August 30, 2003 10:38AM EDT
1993 World Trade Center bomber was 'shocked' by Sept. 11
By LARRY NEUMEISTER, ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK (AP) - Convicted terrorist Ramzi Yousef, who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 and waited in vain for the towers to collapse, saw them topple eight years later on a prison television, his lawyer says.
"He was watching the events when it happened," said his lawyer, Bernard Kleinman, who has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal of two convictions that resulted in life imprisonment for Yousef.
Just hours after the Sept. 11 attack, FBI agents visited Yousef at the Supermax in Florence, Colo., the federal government's most secure prison.
Investigators interrogated Yousef and "completely tossed his cell" looking for leads, but the attack "was as much a shock to him as it was to anybody else," Kleinman said in an interview with The Associated Press.
On Feb. 26, 1993, Yousef and an accomplice planted a bomb in the trade center's underground garage and then retreated across the Hudson River to wait for the towers' fall. Six people were killed and more than 1,000 injured in the attack.
Yousef fled the United States that night but was captured in Pakistan in early 1995. After the arrest, FBI agents transporting Yousef by helicopter made sure he saw, again, that the towers were still standing.
"They wouldn't be if I'd had more money and time," Yousef told them.
In affirming his conviction in April, a federal appeals court noted Yousef created the trade center bombing plot with at least one other man at a terrorist training camp on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan in the spring of 1992.
After arriving in the United States on Sept. 1, 1992, with an Iraqi passport, Yousef recruited accomplices, ordered bomb chemicals and rented a storage shed in Jersey City, N.J., across the Hudson River from Manhattan, the court said.
Four days before the bombing, an accomplice came to New York from Dallas to complete the preparations before the pair drove the bomb-laden van into the trade center, set the bomb's timer to detonate and fled, it added.
Kleinman said in court papers submitted in Washington he wants the Supreme Court to hear an appeal of Yousef's convictions in part because Yousef wasn't properly advised of his rights before he spoke to FBI agents.
Kleinman also wrote that the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ignored principles of international law when it said U.S. courts had jurisdiction over Yousef in a separate plot to blow up a dozen U.S. airliners over the Far East.
The lawyer said planning for that plot occurred in the Philippines and any actions by Yousef occurred outside the United States. To permit the United States to prosecute, the act of terrorism against its citizens would have to have occurred, he argued.
"Mere planning and preparation is not enough," he said of the airliners plot, which was designed to kill 4,000 people.
The lawyer also argued the Sept. 11, 2001, attack had prejudiced an appeals court hearing Yousef's arguments.
"Try as one may, this case cannot be divorced from the events of 9-11," Kleinman told the court. Noting that arguments were heard eight months after the Sept. 11 attack, he wrote the appeals court decision was "entirely results-driven."
Michael Kulstad, a spokesman for U.S. Attorney James B. Comey, declined to comment on the appeal.
Yousef was first convicted of conspiracy in the airline plot. In a second trial, he was convicted of conspiracy in the 1993 plot to blow up the trade center.
He was sentenced to 240 years in prison.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, Yousef lost his television privileges in prison. They were recently restored, minus news channels, Kleinman said.
Kleinman said Yousef has virtually no contact with other inmates and rejects opportunities for outdoor exercise for three hours each week.
For a time, Yousef communicated with Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and Unabomber Theodore J. Kaczynski as all three walked within outdoor exercise cages.
Kleinman visited his client about six months ago and has spoken to him in subsequent telephone conversations.
"I've never had any political discussions with him," he said. "He's able to divorce any political or religious beliefs, fanatical or otherwise, from the legal issues involved."
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