1993 World Trade Center Bombing: A Ryder Van's VIN and a $400 Refund

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On September 1, 1992, Ramzi Yousef flew into JFK from Pakistan beside Ahmad Ajaj, pretending not to know him. Ajaj was arrested with a forged Swedish passport and bomb manuals, while Yousef claimed political asylum on a false Iraqi passport and walked out with a future hearing date. In Jersey City he linked up with followers of the blind cleric Omar Abdel Rahman and built a roughly 1,500 pound urea nitrate device wrapped in aluminum, magnesium and ferric oxide and ringed with hydrogen tanks, at one point ordering chemicals from a hospital bed after a car crash with Mohammad Salameh. His aim was to topple the North Tower into the South Tower. On February 26, 1993, Yousef and Eyad Ismoil parked a yellow Ryder van on level B2, and at 12:18 p.m. the bomb tore a crater 100 feet wide through four sublevels.

The blast cut main power and sent smoke up unpressurized stairwells to the 93rd floor, killing six people, including pregnant worker Monica Rodriguez Smith, and injuring more than a thousand. NYPD bomb squad detective Donald Sadowy found a vehicle identification number on an axle fragment, which traced the van to Salameh, who had reported it stolen and then came back for his $400 deposit. Abdul Rahman Yasin was questioned, released and flew to Iraq. Later came the Emad Salem informant tapes, a disputed Iraq sponsorship theory, and a 2005 jury verdict putting 68 percent of the liability on the Port Authority, later reversed. Stairwell lighting, pressurization and drills added after 1993 helped evacuations on 9/11.

• Yousef shielded a 20 foot fuse inside surgical tubing to mask the smell of smoke.
• NYPD helicopters airlifted 28 people with critical medical problems off the tower roofs.
• The FBI deployed more than 300 agents under the code name Tradebomb.
• Yasin later appeared in a 60 Minutes interview from an Iraqi prison in 2002 and remains a fugitive.
• Windows on the World, on the 107th floor, needed $25 million in repairs because its supply and air conditioning systems ran through the basement.