into as a suspect, taken to FBI headquarters, then re-
leased. The next day, he fled the country to Iraq and
was later indicted for the bombing and placed on
the FBI’s most wanted list. After talking with both
Salameh and Yasin, authorities were led to the apart-
ment where the bomb was built.
Prosecutions One year after his arrest, on March
4, 1994, Salameh was convicted along with cocon-
spirators Ayyad, Abouhalima, and Ajaj, who each re-
ceived a 240-year sentence for his respective role in
the bombing. In 1995, Yousef was arrested in Paki-
stan and returned to New York, and Ismail was
traced to Jordan and also extradited. In 1998, the
two men were also sentenced to 240 years in prison.
Blind Egyptian cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman
was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1996 for plan-
ning the bombing.
Impact The bombing shocked the American pub-
lic greatly, as the United States had seemed immune
to international terrorism. There were discussions
about how such an attack could have happened. In
2008, the Port Authority was found liable for the
damages caused by the bombing, having ignored ev-
idence that the garage was a security risk. The 1993
bombing has been eclipsed by the September 11,
2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in which hi-
jackers crashed two commercial jets into the Twin
Towers, killing nearly three thousand people.
Further Reading
Caram, Peter.The 1993 World Trade Center Bombing:
Foresight and Warning. London: Janus, 2001.
Written by a former antiterrorist officer at the
World Trade Center, this book documents the se-
curity lapses that allowed the incident to occur.
Dwyer, Jim, et al.Two Seconds Under the World: Terror
Comes to America—The Conspiracy Behind the World
Trade Center Bombing.New York: Crown, 1994. Dis-
cusses some conspiracy theories surrounding the
bombing. Includes interviews with confidential
sources.
Pellowski, Michael J.The Terrorist Trial of the 1993
Bombing of the World Trade Center: A Headline Court
Case. Berkeley Heights, N.J.: Enslow, 2003. Details
the events leading up to the bombing as well as
the capture and the trial of the accused.
Reeve, Simon.The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama
Bin Laden, and the Future of Terrorism.Boston:
Northeastern University Press, 1999. Explains
how these two men have used terrorism for reli-
gious and political goals.
Sher yl L. Van HorneSee also Crime; Foreign policy of the United
States; Israel and the United States; Middle East and
North America; Oklahoma City bombing; Terror-
ism; U.S. embassy bombings in Africa. World Trade Organization
protests
The Event The first significant antiglobalization
rally in the contemporary world and the largest
mass protests in the United States since the
Vietnam War
Date November 30, 1999
Place Seattle, Washington
The Seattle demonstrations against the World Trade Orga-
nization closed the city of Seattle, resulted in multiple inju-
ries and the arrest of hundreds, and heralded a new era of
aggressive opposition to the globalization process in the in-
dustrialized democracies of the Northern Hemisphere.
The process of globalization—conventionally de-
fined as the steady growth in economic, social, cul-
tural, and political ties and activities across state
boundaries—began approximately a century before
the Seattle protests with the late nineteenth century
growth of reliable intercontinental transportation
and communication systems. It was not until the late
twentieth century, however, that its negative effects
began to touch the peoples of the economically de-
veloped democratic world. Prior to that time, the op-
position to the globalization process was overwhelm-
ingly confined to the developing world, where first
its place in the empires of Europe and then its
neocolonial exploitation by Western corporations
long disenfranchised its citizens from participating
in the decision-making processes that affected their
lives.
In the 1990’s, a trio of factors moved the frontline
of opposition to globalization from the third world
to the developed states of North America and West-
ern Europe. First and foremost, for the first time
the costs of the globalization process began to be se-
riously significantly felt in the latter as the globally
organized enterprises incorporated inside their bor-The Nineties in America World Trade Organization protests 939