1993 World Trade Center Bombing Motive

1993 World Trade Center Bombing Motive: Attack was "to revenge for my Palestinian brothers and my brothers in Saudi Arabia."

Abdul Rahman Yasin was an accomplice in the 1993 bombing of the WTC. Lesley Stahl, from the CBS show 60 Minutes, interviewed him in May of 2002. She asked him about Ramzi Yousef and how Yousef convinced him to help him.

Abdul Rahman Yasin: He was not charismatic but he had a strong logic. He can convince people easily. He convinced me.

Lesley Stahl: So you’re saying that Ramzi Yousef and Mohammed Salameh tried to politicize you. Is that what you're telling us?

Abdul Rahman Yasin: Yes, they tried and I was influenced. They used to tell me that you are an Iraqi and you have seen the destruction in Iraq. And they used to tell me how Arabs suffered a great deal, and that we have to send a message that this is not right. This is to revenge for my Palestinian brothers and my brothers in Saudi Arabia. So they talked to me a lot about this.

Yasin "says he is sorry for what he did and that the bombers, whom he said he met for the first time while living in a Jersey City apartment building, talked him into it."

After his capture, the FBI questioned Ramzi Yousef on the flight back from Pakistan about his motivations for bombing the World Trade Center in 1993.

"Yousef said he took no thrill from killing American citizens and felt guilty about the civilian deaths he had caused. But his conscience was overridden by his desire to stop the killing of Arabs by Israeli troops." "Yousef said he "would like it to be different," but only terrible violence could force this kind of abrupt political change. He said that he truly believed his actions had been rational and logical in pursuit of a change in U.S. policy toward Israel. He mentioned no other motivation during the flight and no other issue in American foreign policy that concerned him." Steve Coll, Ghost Wars p273

Yousef sent a letter to the New York Times after the 1993 bombing attack on the WTC, "We declare our responsibility for the explosion on the mentioned building. This action was done in response for the American political, economical, and military support to Israel the state of terrorism and to the rest of the dictator countries in the region."