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- Convicted World Trade Center bombing
mastermind Ramzi Ahmed Yousef was sentenced to life in prison without parole. (AP,
1/8/98)
- Theodore J. Kaczynski pleaded guilty to all
Federal charges against him, acknowledging that he was the Unabomber who killed
three people and maimed 28 others with package bombs in an 18-year campaign against modern
technology. (The New York Times, 1/23/98)
- Three members of the Ku Klux Klan, Edward Taylor
Jr., Shawn Dee Adams and Carl Waskom, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and have been sentenced
to lengthy Federal prison terms for their involvement in a 1997 plot to bomb the Mitchell
Energy gas plant near Bridgeport, Texas. (UPI, 1/23/98)
- The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) ordered
Hani Abdel Rahim Sayegh, 29, suspected of involvement in the June 1996 truck
bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. Airmen, deported from the United States for
reasons of national security. Sayegh reneged on a plea agreement with U.S. officials in
which he would have pled guilty to a separate terrorism conspiracy charge in return for
providing information about the 1996 attack. (The Washington Post, 1/23/98)
- James Rogers, 41, who was convicted in August 1997 of
supplying blueprints of a FBI fingerprint center in Clarksburg, West Virginia, to the Mountaineer
Militia, was sentenced to a year and a day in Federal prison. Rogers is the first
person to be convicted and sentenced under the 1996 anti-terrorism law which bars
providing material support to terrorism. (AP, 2/3/98)
- Federal authorities issued an arrest warrant and posted
a $100,000 reward for information leading to the capture of Eric Robert Rudolph, 31,
wanted in connection with the fatal bombing of a Birmingham abortion clinic in
January 1998. News agencies received faxed claims of responsibility for the bombing from
the white supremacist group Army of God. (The Washington Post, 2/15/98)
- At a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on foreign
terrorist activities in the United States, an FBI official testified that Hamas, Hezbollah
and the Egyptian-based Gama'at al-Islamiyya "each has established an active
presence in the United States. The activities of the American wings of these organizations
generally revolve around fundraising and low-level intelligence gathering."
(Statement of FBI official Dale L. Watson, 2/24/98)
- A Federal judge ordered Iran to pay $247.5
million in damages for its role in the April 1995 terrorist bombing of an Israeli bus that
killed American student Alisa Flatow. Iran was sued under the 1996 antiterrorism law which
allows U.S. citizens to file suit in U.S. courts against foreign governments for damages
from terrorism. Islamic Jihad a terrorist group supported by Iran had claimed
responsibility for the attack. In another case, a Federal judge ruled that under the same
statute, Libya may be sued for its alleged role in the December 1988 bombing of Pan
Am Flight 103. (New York Law Journal, 3/3/98, Reuters, 3/11/98)
- Federal agents apprehended a group of white supremacists
calling themselves The New Order who had planned to bomb public buildings across
the country and kill a Federal judge and a civil rights lawyer. Dennis Michael McGiffen,
35, Wallace Scott Weicherding, 64, and Ralph P. Cock, 27, had targeted offices including
the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, the national offices of the Anti-Defamation
League in New York, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. (The New York
Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 3/7/98)
- In two separate cases, Long Island arms dealer Parviz
Lavi, 65, and New Jersey businessman Daniel Malloy, 40, were arrested for trying to sell
military hardware to Iran, in violation of the U.S. embargo. Lavi tried to ship
F-14 jet engine parts to Iran and Malloy tried to send missile batteries. Malloy was later
indicted on charges of conspiracy and illegal exporting. (The New York Times,
3/5/98, Reuters, 3/24/98)
- Federal authorities arrested three members of the
North American Militia of Southwestern Michigan. Ken Carter, 47, Bradford Metcalf, 46,
and Randy Graham, 41, are suspected of having plotted terrorist attacks, including the
murders of Federal employees and judges and the bombings of highways and Federal
buildings. (AP, 3/19/98)
- Mountaineer Militia leader Floyd "Ray"
Looker was sentenced to 18 years in prison for his part in a plot to blow up the FBI
fingerprint complex in Clarksburg, West Virginia. (AP, 3/28/98)
- Five anti-government militants belonging to the
Montana Freemen Steven C. Hance, 48, James E. Hance, 25, John R. Hance, 21, Jon
Barry Nelson, 42, and Elwin Ward, 57 were convicted on charges relating to the
Freemen's armed, 81-day standoff with Federal officials at their remote farm compound in
eastern Montana in March-June 1996. (AP, 4/1/98)
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