Suspect Seized in N.Y. in Plot to Kill Mubarak

Federal agents seized an Egyptian-born follower of radical Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman and charged him Saturday with plotting a “suicide mission” to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak while he was in the United States.

According to the complaint filed by prosecutors, the scheme was well advanced when Mubarak visited Washington earlier this year and planned to travel to New York.

Prosecutors charged that surveillance of Mubarak’s Manhattan hotel was carried out, uniforms were purchased so members of the conspiracy could get close to their target by posing as hotel workers, and arrangements were under way to obtain weapons and explosives.

Prosecutors said the elaborate scheme was postponed when Mubarak suddenly canceled the New York leg of his trip but that the conspirators resurrected their plan for Mubarak’s planned visit to New York this September.

FBI agents arrested Abdo Mohammed Haggag, a 34-year-old computer programmer who sometimes acted as an aide and translator for Abdul Rahman. After a hearing before a U.S. magistrate in federal court in Manhattan, the Jersey City, N.J., resident was ordered held without bail.

Court papers also charged that Haggag conspired with Siddig Ibrahim Siddig Ali and Clement Rodney Hampton-El, who have been charged, along with nine other defendants, with planning to bomb the U.N. building, two Hudson River tunnels and the federal building containing the offices of the FBI.

Several of these defendants were taken into custody last month in Queens, allegedly as explosives were being mixed in 55-gallon drums.

The complaint filed Saturday also revealed that in addition to Emad Ali Salem, a former Egyptian army lieutenant colonel who is the U.S. government’s informant in the multi-bomb plot case, prosecutors have obtained the cooperation of an unidentified confidential witness.

The existence of the confidential witness was confirmed by David Weiss, Haggag’s court-appointed lawyer, who provided no other details. However, Weiss, speaking to reporters on the courthouse steps after his client’s hearing, said prosecutors would also charge that the plotters planned to try to kill Mubarak by exploding a car bomb at the U.N. building, apparently in case the hotel attack could not be carried out.

According to the complaint, Siddig Ali, while discussing the multi-bomb plot on May 18-19, told the confidential witness that 10 members of his group “had made elaborate arrangements to attempt to murder Mubarak during his visit to the United States in late March or early April, 1993.”

Prosecutors charged that the plotters had obtained not only hotel workers’ uniforms, but confidential information about Mubarak’s itinerary.

“Siddig Ali explained, among other things, that members of the conspiracy understood the mission would be a ‘suicide mission’ . . . that there would be a high likelihood that the conspirators would be killed during its execution, since the area around the hotel would be filled with law enforcement and other security personnel,” court papers said.

“Siddig Ali further explained that the plan had been postponed because of a ‘leak’ which caused President Mubarak to alter his travel arrangements. Siddig Ali had learned about this ‘leak,’ he said, because Haggag had been interviewed by American law enforcement agents,” the papers continued. “Siddig Ali later suggested that the plan to murder President Mubarak would be carried out in September, 1993.”

Haggag, Siddig Ali and others again discussed Mubarak’s murder with the confidential witness in mid-June in Jersey City, prosecutors said.

During that conversation, both men claimed credit for designing the assassination plan, and Haggag accused Siddig Ali of being a government informant and responsible for the mission’s failure.

Earlier in May, Siddig Ali told the confidential witness that he and Haggag and “several others” had received training for a “secret mission.” The other participants were not identified in the court papers.

Prosecutors said planning for the alleged assassination attempt began in late 1992 and that on May 6, 1993, Haggag met with the confidential witness and one other person in his residence in Jersey City.

At that time, Haggag allegedly asked the witness to sweep his home for surveillance devices because he and others were approached by federal agents.

In addition to working with Abdul Rahman, Haggag lived in the same Jersey City apartment building as the blind cleric, who is seeking to overturn Egypt’s secular government but denies any involvement in bomb plots in the United States.

Abdul Rahman is being held in a federal prison in Upstate New York pending appeal of a decision that he violated immigration laws when he entered the United States in 1991.

The Egyptian government is seeking his extradition to face criminal charges of inciting violence and attempted murder during a riot in 1989 in his hometown of El Faiyum.