Cairo: Omar Abdul Rahman, convicted of conspiracy in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and of planning more attacks as part of a "war of urban terrorism" in the United States, has died in a US prison, his son Ammar told Reuters on Saturday.
Ammar said his family had received a phone call from a US representative saying his father had died. He was 78.
The Egyptian-born Abdul Rahman remained a spiritual leader for terrorists even after decades of incarceration.
With his long gray beard, sunglasses and red and white cap, the charismatic Omar called for the death of people and governments he disapproved.
His following was tied to terrorist killings and bomb attacks around the world.
Abdul Rahman, who was born in a village along the Nile on May 3, 1938, lost his eyesight due to childhood diabetes and grew up studying a Braille version of the Quran.
As an adult he was imprisoned and accused of issuing a fatwa leading to the 1986 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, against whom he had railed for years.
He said he was hung upside-down from the ceiling, beaten with sticks and given electric shocks while held but he was eventually acquitted and went into self-imposed exile in 1990.
He managed to get to New York after the US Embassy in Sudan granted him a tourist visa in 1990 — despite the fact that he was on the State Department's list of people with ties to terror groups.
US authorities blamed a computer error for the visa, but the mistake was compounded in 1991 when Abdul Rahman was given a green card and permanent US resident status. The New York Times reported the CIA had approved the visa application for Abdul Rahman, who had supported the anti-Soviet mujahedin in Afghanistan during the 1980s.
Abdul Rahman preached his radical message and lived in the New York City borough of Brooklyn and nearby Jersey City, New Jersey, building a strong following.
Even in exile, he remained a force in the Middle East, where followers listened to cassette tapes and radio broadcasts of his sermons decrying the Egyptian government and Israel.
While in the United States Abdul Rahman and his disciples would be linked to the 1990 slaying in New York of militant Rabbi Meir Kahane, the 1992 killing of an anti-militant writer in Egypt and attacks on foreign tourists in Egypt.
US authorities took action in 1992 by revoking Abdul Rahman's green card on the grounds that he had lied about a bad check charge in Egypt and about having two wives when he entered the country.
He was facing the possibility of deportation when a truck bomb went off in the basement parking garage of the World Trade Center on February 26, 1993, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000 in an attack that made Americans realise that they were not immune to international terrorism.
Four months later Abdul Rahman was arrested and went on trial with several followers in 1995, accused of plotting a day of terror for the US — assassinations and synchronised bombings of the UN headquarters, a major federal government facility in Manhattan and tunnels and a bridge linking New York City and New Jersey.
The indictment said Abdul Rahman and his followers planned to "levy a war of urban terrorism against the United States" to stop US support for Israel and change its overall Middle East policy.
The defendants were not directly charged with the 1993 World Trade Center attack but were convicted of conspiring with those who did carry out the bombing.
Abdul Rahman's convictions also included plotting to kill Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak during a visit to the United States in 1993, a Jewish New York state legislator and a Jewish New York State Supreme Court justice.
Much of the case against Abdul Rahman and his followers was based on video and audio recordings made with the help of a bodyguard who became an FBI informant. A video also showed four defendants mixing fertiliser and diesel fuel for bombs.
After a nine-month trial, he andd nine followers were found guilty in October 1995 on 48 of 50 charges.
He did not testify at his trial but at a sentencing hearing Abdul Rahman gave a passionate speech of more than 90 minutes through a translator, proclaiming his innocence and denouncing the US as an enemy of his faith.
Abdul Rahman was still an important figure in even after years in prison. A year before his Al Qaida followers pulled off the most destructive assault on US soil, the Septenver 11, 2001, attacks, Osama bin Laden had pledged to free Abdul Rahman from prison.
When Mohammed Mursi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, began his short-lived presidency of Egypt in 2012, he said winning Abdul Rahman's freedom would be a priority and the militants who attacked an Algerian oilfield and took hostages in 2013 also demanded his release.
In 2006 one of Abdul Rahman's lawyers, Lynne F Stewart, was sentenced to 28 months in prison for helping smuggle messages from him to his followers in Egypt.
