Mohammed A. Salameh
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Mohammed A. Salameh (Arabic: محمد سلامة) (born September 1, 1967) is a convicted perpetrator of the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing.
Salameh was born near Nablus, an Arab town on the West Bank. In his final years in high school, Salameh, according to his brother, "became religious, started to pray and read the Koran with other friends in high school. He stopped most of his past activities and hobbies....He was not a fundamentalist. He was interested in Islamic teachings." According to another source, Salameh comes from a long line of guerrilla fighters on his mother's side. His maternal grandfather fought in the 1936 Arab revolt against British rule in Palestine, and even as an old man joined the PLO and was jailed by the Israelis. A maternal uncle was arrested in 1968 for "terrorism" and served 18 years in an Israeli prison before he was released and deported, making his way to Baghdad, where he became number two in the "Western Sector," a PLO terrorist unit under Iraqi influence.
Salameh earned a degree from the Islamic studies faculty of the University of Jordan. His family went into debt to buy him an airline ticket to the United States, where he wanted to obtain an MBA. Salameh entered the United States on February 17, 1988, on a six-month tourist visa, and apparently lived in Jersey City illegally for the next five years. He apparently belonged to the Masjid al-Salam Mosque in Jersey City, whose preachers included fundamentalist Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman. Slight and bearded, Salameh was arrested in the process of returning to collect the deposit on the van that he had rented to carry the Trade Center bombing materials. On March 4, 1993, Salameh, 26, was charged by the FBI with "aiding and abetting" the WTC bombing on February 26, 1993. He is also alleged to be part of the group that stored the explosive material in a Jersey City storage locker.
