Omar Abdel-Rahman
Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman (), (
ʾUmar ʾAbd ar-Raḥmān; 3 May 1938 – 18 February 2017), commonly known in the United States as "
The Blind Sheikh", was a blind
Egyptian Islamist militant who served a
life sentence at the
Federal Medical Center, Butner near
Butner, North Carolina, United States. Formerly a resident of New York City, Abdel-Rahman and nine others were convicted of
seditious conspiracy in 1995. His prosecution grew out of investigations of the
1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Abdel-Rahman was the leader of
Al-Jama'a al-Islamiyya (also known as "The Islamic Group"), a
militant Islamist movement in
Egypt that is considered a
terrorist organization by the European Union and the Egyptian government. The group was responsible for many acts of violence, including the November 1997
Luxor massacre, in which 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians were killed.
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