Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

260 • HOLY TERRORinformer revealed Rahman discussing the relative merits of varioustargets for this terrorist bombing campaign.On 27 August 1993 Abdul Rahman was charged before a U.S. federaljudge with leading this conspiracy to carry out a bombing campaignagainst the United States. On 9 January 1995 the trial of Abdul Rahmanalong with 11 other defendants charged with the bombing of the WorldTrade Center and for the conspiracy to bomb the New York landmarksbegan. In the course of this trial it was learned that two of those chargedin connection with the Holland Tunnel bomb plot, El Sayyid Nosairand Clement Hampton-El, had been under FBI surveillance, apparentlyto determine what material help to the Afghan Mujahideen was originatingamong private groups in the United States. Hampton-El was alsoa member of another covert Muslim group, the Jama’at al Fuqra. On14 March 1995 Emad Saleh, the former FBI informer, testified that theaim of the group had been to detonate 12 bombs simultaneously againsttargets thought to be associated with Jews or Jewish institutions. On 1October 1995 Abdul Rahman was convicted of seditious conspiracy,solicitation and conspiracy to assassinate Egyptian President HosniMubarak, solicitation to attack U.S. military installations, and conspiracyto conduct the bombing campaign against New York tunnelsand landmarks. On 17 January 1996 Abdul Rahman was sentenced tolife imprisonment for his role in the Holland Tunnel bomb plot. He iscurrently serving his sentence in a U.S. federal prison.HOLY TERROR. Term used by David Rapaport and Bruce Hoffmanto identify a strain of postmodern terrorism accentuated by a religious,transcendental, or millennialist motivation. While religiouslymotivated terrorists are not a new phenomenon, since the JewishZealots of the first century and the Isma’ili Shi’ite Fedayeen assassinsof the 11th century were also terrorists motivated by a religiousideal, the phenomenon has become more prominent and more lethalin the post–cold war era, in which the resurgence of religious fundamentalistand ethnonationalist militant movements coincides withthe availability of weapons of mass destruction and tactics capableof killing or maiming large numbers of people.Whereas the leftist revolutionary groups and ethnonationalistgroups of the last decades of the 20th century had political goalsthat their opponents could comprehend, if not condone, and whereasmany of these groups sought some degree of political legitimacy