950803

Key suspect of

World Trade

Centre bombing

held in Jordan

NEW YORK: A key suspect in the deadly bombing of the World Trade Centre has been arrested in Jordan and is en route to the United States, law enforcement sources said on Wednesday.

The man, a Palestinian with Jordanian citizenship, was scheduled to be transferred to the United States late on Wednesday night or early Thursday morning, federal law enforcement officials in Washington said.

The officials gave no other details about the suspect, but said they expected a federal indictment against him to be unsealed in New York on Thursday.

New York 1 cable news television station said the suspect goes by the alias Ayyad Ishmael Najim, a Kuwaiti citizen.

He is believed to have parked the Ryder van that carried the 1,200-pound (544 kg) bomb into the garage of the basement of the landmark complex in lower Manhattan. The explosion killed six people and injured more than 1,000 others on February 26, 1993.

Najim will be arraigned in Manhattan Federal Court before US Disctrict Judge Kevin Duffy, the judge who heard the case and sentenced four other Muslim men to more than 240 years in prison for their participation in the blast.

Defence sources said that the accused mastermind of the attack, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, implicated Najim in an attempt to entice the government to consider making a deal with him.

The sources said Yousef fired his court-appointed lawyer about 10 days ago and sent a letter to Duffy saying he wanted to represent himself. He also told Duffy he was "totally innocent" of the trade centre bombing.

According to sources, Mohammad Salameh, one of the bomb defendants convicted in the case, was waiting to drive Yousef and Najim out of the garage after they lit the fuse, when another vehicle blocked their way.

"They became quite worried .... and were afraid the building would fall on them," the source said. That night Yousef and Najim left Kennedy Airport on a flight to Pakistan.-Reuter