The Egyptian national Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman (the “Blind Sheikh”), a resident of Brooklyn, is sentenced to life in prison for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center and the Landmarks Case—or the so-called “days of terror” attacks, the spring 1993 conspiracy to attack multiple buildings and tunnels in New York City.
Together with nine other defendants who do not enter in plea agreements with the government, Abdel-Rahman is sentence to life in prison for “sedition.” It is the end of active plotting in the New York area, most of it only ever tentatively connected to al Qaeda, but the beginning of the era of “homegrown violent extremists.”