His followers were convicted for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. The Sheikh himself received a life sentence for his own role in approving a planned second wave of terrorist acts in the New York City area. The case of Sheikh Abdel Rahman is significant because he was clearly excludable from the United States under the pre1990 law. but the legal authority to exclude him ended with enactment of the Immigration Reform Act that year. He was admitted to this country through an amazing series of bureaucratic blunders. Then in 1990. as the U.S. government was building its deportation ease against him. the law chaniged. As a resuit. the State Department was forced to try to deport him on the grounds that he once bounced a check in Egypt and had more than one wife. rather than the fact that he was the known spiritual leader of a violent terrorist organization. A highranking State Department official informed my staff during my investigation that if Sheikh Abdel Rahman had tried to enter after the 1990 law went into affect. they would have had no legal authority to exclude him from the United States because they had no proof that he had ever personally committed a terrorist act. despite the fact that his followers were known to have been involved in the assassination of Anwar Sadat.
Keywords matched
deportation Immigration