New Defendant Is Named in Trade Center Bombing

NEW YORK —  A new defendant was named Wednesday in the World Trade Center bombing in an indictment in which authorities charged that he helped mix explosives used in the February blast that killed six people and injured more than 1,000.

Abdul Rahman Yasin, the latest suspect, is believed to be in Iraq where he traveled the day after the FBI made its first arrest in the case, seizing Mohammed A. Salameh who was accused of driving a rented van containing the 1,200-pound bomb into the trade center parking garage on Feb. 26.

Court papers charged that Yasin and two other accused conspirators mixed chemicals, including urea nitrate and nitroglycerine, in a Jersey City, N.J., apartment in January and February. Investigators later found traces of explosive chemicals splattered on the walls of the residence.

Yasin boarded a flight from New York’s Kennedy Airport to Amman, Jordan, on March 5. At the time, federal agents had alerted airport police to watch for Yasin and it was unclear how he was able to depart without being noticed.

“No one told him he couldn’t go,” defense attorney Ronald Kuby said Wednesday. “He left in the open, on a scheduled flight. Now the government wants to call him a fugitive. That’s ridiculous.”

Lawyers in the case said that the FBI has been pressing relatives of Yasin to talk him into returning to the United States to cooperate in the investigation. Yasin’s mother and a brother live in Jersey City. The addition of his name to the latest indictment in part reflects the failure of those efforts.

Yasin is one of six suspects charged in the bombing case. Another fugitive, also believed to be in Iraq, is Ramzi Ahmed Yousef. Last month, the State Department offered a $2-million reward for information leading to Yousef’s arrest.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Michael McCurry said that Yousef should be considered “armed and extremely dangerous.”

“Yousef has demonstrated willingness and ability to undertake acts of international terrorism and is likely to engage in such acts in the future unless he is brought into custody,” McCurry said.

In a related action Wednesday, federal prosecutors agreed to a separate trial for a former Jordanian-born limousine driver, who was previously charged in the bombing. But a lawyer for Bilal Alkaisi stressed that the separate trial did not signal that his client had decided to cooperate with the government.

“This does not constitute cooperation,” said Michael Washor, one of Alkaisi’s attorneys.

In the agreement reached with the government, Alkaisi consented to an adjournment of the proceedings in his case until after the conclusion of the trial of the other defendants, scheduled to begin in early September.

Goldman reported from New York and Rempel from Los Angeles.