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Federal agents contend that the ginger-haired Abouhalima, known to friends as Mahmud the Red, was a mastermind of the tower explosion. They portray him as a commando leader who relied on his guerrilla training in Afghanistan to instruct his colleagues in bomb testing and other military techniques. Compared with his bumbling co-defendants, who left their fingerprints on rental-car receipts and explosives splattered on their walls, Abouhalima is an elusive target for prosecutors. His alleged ability to play a central role in such a wide-ranging conspiracy yet leave so little physical evidence has made him seem like a kind of Teflon Terrorist.
There is still much that is mystifying about Abouhalima. The allegation would seem comical if a bomb had not actually ripped through the World Trade Center: an immigrant cabdriver tries to blow up a world-famous symbol of the American Dream. So much of Abouhalima's past seems humdrum that to read his $ story and believe in his guilt is to be reminded of Hannah Arendt's line about Adolf Eichmann embodying the banality of evil. Look at pieces of his life, however, and one finds a growing religious fervor that could have transformed Abouhalima into a man with a motive for destruction in the name of a higher goal. Says Wayne Gilbert, who retired in July as the FBI's assistant director of intelligence: "In terms of his background, Abouhalima may be the prototype for the kind of terrorist we're going to see in the future." This is his story.
EGYPT, LAND WITHOUT HOPE
The graffiti on the side of a house in Kafr al-Dawar, where Abouhalima spent his childhood, capture some of the conflicting cultural forces that have buffeted this Nile Delta town in the past few years. The mural shows a grinning Mickey Mouse pointing his white-gloved hand to a familiar Koranic text: GOD IS GRACIOUS AND MERCIFUL.
Kafr is at a crossroads, trapped between an old world and a newer one. This ramshackle suburb, 15 miles south of Alexandria, is dominated by a state-owned textile factory, an industrial fortress decorated with bunting in the Egyptian national colors of red, white and black. Meanwhile, the families of workers are housed in a sprawling walled enclave of cramped, featureless concrete bungalows. The streets, mostly unpaved, are overflowing with 250,000 people. Unemployment is high, and most of the young people flee overseas to find work elsewhere. Kafr al-Dawar's civic history is marked by a bloody strike in 1952. Today Islamic militancy is on the rise, while the police and the national government are despised. The slogan on political posters is explicit: ISLAM IS THE SOLUTION.
Abouhalima was born here in 1959, the first of four sons of a mill foreman. Villagers remember him as an ordinary, well-rounded and cheerful youth who found comfort in religion. He prayed hard and shunned alcohol. "Mahmud has a loving personality," says Uncle Ali. Another uncle, Ibrahim, insists that his nephew never attended any Islamic meetings as a youth and was no activist as a student. Says he: "Mahmud studied education at Alexandria University, came home, played soccer, and that's it."