FBI Arrests Man Accused of Training Bomb Suspects

The FBI arrested a New York martial arts teacher Tuesday on charges that he illegally purchased firearms and provided training to conspirators planning a war of urban terrorism in the United States.

Yahya Abu Ubaidah Muhammad, also known as Karl Dexter Taylor, was seized at his home in Queens at 7:15 a.m. The indictment charges that in November, 1992, he bought assault rifles, magazines and ammunition at a gun show near Mechanicsville, Va., and illegally transported the weapons by bus to Manhattan.

Prosecutors said he later distributed the firearms to others now charged with conspiring to blow up the United Nations, two tunnels linking New York and New Jersey and the Manhattan headquarters of the FBI to protest U.S. policies in the Middle East. Ubaidah also helped instruct the conspirators at a paramilitary training camp near New Bloomfield, Pa., authorities alleged.

Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind Egyptian cleric, and 10 other defendants are now being tried in Manhattan on the conspiracy charges.

Kenneth D. Wasserman, a lawyer representing one of the defendants, said that Ubaidah for a time had lived in the same Brooklyn building as his client and that the FBI had conducted extensive video surveillance of the premises from April to June of 1993.

Wasserman said that Ubaidah, who held black belts in karate and judo, had operated a martial arts school in the building in addition to working part time as a carpenter and importing merchandise from Morocco.

Judge Michael Dolinger ordered Ubaidah held for a hearing later in the week.

On Feb. 6, a key confidant of Abdel Rahman turned against him and decided to become a government witness. Siddig Ibrihim Siddig Ali, a 34-year-old Sudanese national who acted as Abdel Rahman’s bodyguard and translator, confessed that he had participated in the plot to bomb the targets in New York and had taken part in paramilitary training in Pennsylvania.

Lawyers indicated that Ubaidah’s arrest Tuesday could be the result of Siddig Ali’s statements to prosecutors.