U.N. Bomb Plot Charge Linked to Trade Center

A suspect previously arrested on charges of hindering the investigation of the World Trade Center bombing was indicted Wednesday for plotting to blow up the United Nations and three other prominent New York City targets.

The indictment served as an important bridge between the alleged plan to carry out the multisite bombings and the actual explosion at the trade center on Feb. 26 in Lower Manhattan that killed six people and injured more than 1,000.

Ibrahim A. Elgabrowny was arrested on March 4 on charges that he unlawfully resisted the execution of a search warrant at his Brooklyn apartment, that he possessed five fraudulent Nicaraguan passports and he struck federal agents.

The new charges against Elgabrowny, the owner of a small contracting business in Brooklyn, are far more serious. According to the indictment, beginning in late 1991 he discussed plans with Emad Ali Salem, a former Egyptian army lieutenant colonel, to bomb the United Nations, two Hudson River tunnels and the federal building containing the offices of the FBI. Salem has been identified as the government’s principal informant in the investigation but this is the first suggestion that he had been working for the FBI as early as 1991.

Court papers charged that on last Dec. 28, Elgabrowny had a telephone conversation with Salem and with another person. The contents of the phone call were not divulged. But on that date, a small explosive, possibly a half-stick of dynamite, was detonated in the parking garage of the trade center in what authorities believe may have been a rehearsal for the massive blast.

Elgabrowny is a cousin of El Sayyid A. Nosair, an Egyptian immigrant who was accused of killing Rabbi Meir Kahane, the founder of the militant Jewish Defense League. Nosair was acquitted of slaying Kahane in 1990 at a mid-Manhattan hotel, but he was convicted of other charges in the case and is serving time in state prison.