The signs that terrorists would continue to target New York City kept getting louder and louder in the 1990's, after a truck bomb failed to take down Tower 1 of the World Trade Center on February 26, 1993. The explosion did kill six people, including pregnant Monica Rodriguez Smith, a Port Authority employee who was carrying a son. The huge crater created by the force of the blast inside the parking garage was six stories high.
A succession of terror conspiracies followed, including the arrest of blind Egyptian sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who was later convicted of plotting to bomb the United Nations, two tunnels and a bridge. Then, on March 1, 1994, a Lebanese-born cab driver shot up a white van filled with Orthodox Jewish students, as it traveled onto the access ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge. Ari Halberstam, just 16, was declared brain dead and fellow student, Nachum Sosonkin, suffered life-altering injuries.
So I wasn't shocked on July 31, 1997, when I was sent to an outlier, rundown section of Park Slope, Brooklyn--after the MTA police and NYPD Emergency Service Unit thwarted a plot to bomb the Atlantic Avenue subway station in Sunset Park. It was a hub for twelve subway lines and the Long Island Railroad.
Atlantic Avenue subway/railroad hub in Brooklyn, N.Y.
The story had a sensational twist.
A brand-new roommate living with Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, 23, and Lafi Khalil, 22--both Palestinian men who were in the United States illegally--had flagged down police officers the night before, frantically waving his arms and yelling "Bomba!" The agitated man was an Egyptian graduate student attending school in America on a diversity visa program.
Lafi Khalil, left, and Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, both from the West Bank.
Khalil was acquitted in the subway bomb plot.
The student was quickly taken to the 88th Precinct in Brooklyn, where an interpreter was called in. The man said he saw bombing devices in the apartment, which was located behind a car service at 248 Fourth Avenue in Park Slope. He described the layout of the living space.
At 4:40 a.m. on Thursday, July 31, the NYPD entered the dark apartment behind the car service and headed toward a back room. Police shot both Abu Mezer and Khalil, when one of them moved toward a black bag containing explosive devices and the other tried to grab an officer's gun.
Detective Paul Yurkiw was the NYPD Bomb Squad member who took the devices out of the apartment that morning, after dozens and dozens of residents were forced to evacuate a 3-square block area....and 300,000 subway commuters had their work days stalled.
"There were four pipe bombs in a backpack," Yurkiw later recalled. "Wired. Ready to go. They were wrapped in 9mm shells; they were wrapped with 10-penny nails."
Explosive devices discovered in backpack on July 31, 1997. (U.S. government evidence)
Police said Abu Mezer had written a suicide note in Arabic, stating his hatred of Israel and the United States. The foiled plot in New York City happened two days after suicide bombers had detonated explosives in a crowded Jerusalem market, killing 15 people.
Then-NYPD Police Commissioner Howard Safir noted the Brooklyn bombs were designed to "kill anyone within 25 feet of detonation in an enclosed space."
The FBI Assistant Director at the time, James Kallstrom, observed, "I think we were close to a disaster."
From his bed at Kings County Hospital, Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer spoke with the FBI after his arrest and admitted he had wanted to target the rush-hour subways "because there are a lot of Jews who ride that train."
This was not a "one and done" kind of story.
The first day was filled with reporting about the circumstances of the raid and the remarkable way police learned of the plot.
Then came the second day....a follow-up.
My news managers at PIX11 sent me back to Park Slope on Friday, August 1st, to seek out more information about the suspects' lives in Brooklyn. We were already learning about Abu Mezer's repeated attempts to enter the United States illegally from Canada, through the northwestern border of our country. Abu Mezer had been detained by Immigration and Naturalization agents three times in a 13-month period. He even claimed asylum, saying Israel had falsely accused him of being a member of Hamas, the terrorist organization. His bond had been reduced in January 1997, while plans to deport him were pending. That's when Abu Mezer made his way to New York City. He later made his way to North Carolina to buy supplies for bomb-making.
Lafi Khalil, meantime, remained in New York City after his tourist visa had expired.
Because I had secured video footage of the massive crater inside Tower 1 of the World Trade Center in 1993, along with evidence presented at the 1995 trial, my news bosses were eager to see what I could discover at Abu Mezer and Khalil's dilapidated apartment in Park Slope.
I ended up being a little too diligent.
When I got to the courtyard outside the rundown apartment, the police and FBI were long gone and the crime scene tape was removed. I noticed an open window.
So while my mother was at home watching my 18-month old son, I decided to shimmy through the open window and see the inside of the accused terrorists' lair. I went head first, and I'm sure the sight of my legs trying to make it all the way in was something to behold. At the time, I was 38 years old. I managed to find a chair to grab onto, as all five feet, eight inches of me tumbled into the apartment.
My cameraman was having none of it and remained outside to videotape through the window, capturing slogans scrawled on the white walls in Arabic.
Inside, I noticed a small audio cassette in the hallway and thought it may contain something of interest we could report on. I took it back to the newsroom.
When I got to the office of News Director Karen Scott, she immediately realized I'd been overzealous in my efforts to gather information. She called the FBI Special Agent who dealt with the media and arranged to meet him at an East Side cafe' Saturday afternoon, presenting him with the audio cassette. I never found out whether anything of note was on it.
We later learned one of the bombing suspects had received a summons for fare beating, as he scoped out the Atlantic Avenue subway station, two days before the planned bombing.
Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer photographed striking a militant pose.
On July 23, 1998, Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer was convicted on all counts of a conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction. Speaking of his childhood in the West Bank, he did a diatribe against U.S. support for Israel at his sentencing. The judge sentenced Abu Mezer to life without the chance for parole. Now age 50, he's housed at the United States Penitentiary in Allenwood, Pennsylvania.
Abu Mezer's roommate, Lafi Khalil, was acquitted in the bomb plot but convicted of immigration fraud. He received a three year sentence, and federal records indicate he was released from custody on March 10, 2000.
And in the years that followed, especially in the post-9/11 world, I did hundreds of stories that dealt with failed, and successful, terror plots. But I never crawled through a window again at an abandoned crime scene. Lesson learned.
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