Trade Center Bomb Suspect Said Framed

NEW YORK —  The man accused of masterminding the World Trade Center bombing was framed by overzealous federal agents eager to make arrests at the expense of the truth, a defense attorney told jurors in closing arguments Tuesday.

“It doesn’t make sense how Ramzi Yousef was in the United States with no money and no contacts and somehow becomes the mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing,” attorney Roy Kulcsar said. Kulcsar suggested that testimony about a confession by Yousef was a lie.

Yousef, an electrical engineer of uncertain nationality, is accused of organizing a group of accomplices and building a bomb that was intended to topple the twin 110-story towers, kill tens of thousands of people and shock the United States into curbing aid to Israel.

The towers remained standing in the Feb. 26, 1993, attack, but six people were killed and more than 1,000 were injured.

Yousef looked straight ahead throughout Kulcsar’s argument just as he had a day earlier when a prosecutor described him as a “cold-blooded terrorist.”

U.S. District Judge Kevin Duffy said the jury would get the case today after prosecutors make a rebuttal argument. Yousef and a 26-year-old alleged accomplice, Eyad Ismoil, face life in prison if convicted of conspiracy, the most serious charge.