Omar Abdel-Rahman (the Egyptian “blind sheikh”) visits the anti-Soviet front in Afghanistan for the first time, meeting with Palestinian leader Abdullah Azzam and a young Osama bin Laden.
Within a year, the two main Egyptian radical Islamic ideologues, the blind sheikh and Ayman al Zawahiri were exiled from their home countries, Zawahiri first escaping to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and then going to Peshawar. Abdel-Rahman was the most likely culprit behind the assassination of Azzam, ostensibly part of a power struggle, before he found his way to the United States – on still mysterious visas – where he was involved in the 1993 World Trade Center attack. Zawahiri, on the other hand, the head of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, would forge an alliance with Azzam and join bin Laden (and still amazingly still hides today, there or in Pakistan).
Day: March 21, 2021