Terrorist’s Severe Prison Conditions Spark Ire, Lawsuit

He is blind, has diabetes, asthma and a heart ailment and is nearly 60 years old.

But the U.S. government is treating Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman as if he were a criminal about to escape, keeping him in isolation in federal prison and denying him communication privileges afforded most other inmates.

The restrictions on Rahman, convicted in 1995 as the leader of a conspiracy to bomb New York landmarks, follow prison rules Atty. Gen. Janet Reno issued last year for terrorists. Their crimes are particularly grave and, if granted customary mail and phone privileges, they could order more attacks, she reasoned.

But Rahman’s health and treatment at the prison in Springfield, Mo., have angered Muslims here and abroad, with some vowing to take revenge. Some members of the group claiming responsibility for this week’s massacre of tourists at Luxor, Egypt, say their gunmen had hoped to take hostages for the sheik’s release.

At least one distinguished American is upset about Rahman’s situation, too. Ramsey Clark, former attorney general in the Johnson administration, has gone to bat for the cleric by filing a suit against the government. Clark called Rahman’s prison conditions “unbelievable.”

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Rahman has been imprisoned for more than two years since being convicted, along with nine others, of conspiring to wage urban warfare against the United States. In what prosecutors called a major victory in the fight against international terrorism, the defendants were convicted of plotting simultaneous bombings at U.N. headquarters, the FBI field office in Manhattan and two commuter tunnels linking New York and New Jersey.

Rahman, who is serving a life sentence, also was convicted of plotting to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak during a U.S. visit.

Prosecutors also believed Rahman and some of his followers helped plan the bombing of the World Trade Center in February 1993, but neither Rahman nor his direct associates were accused in the case.

Clark has sought to ease Rahman’s conditions without apparent success.

“Instead of having him in a hospital, they have him in a separate segregation punishment unit” where he has no contact with other prisoners, Clark said. Rahman has had chest pains, high blood pressure and pains around his kidneys and liver, he added.

Clark’s lawsuit, filed six months ago, claims the conditions of Rahman’s solitary confinement in a damp basement cell are unconstitutional because they amount to “cruel and unusual punishment.” The suit aims to get Rahman transferred to the general prison population and restore his religious rights.

Todd Craig, chief spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, insisted that Rahman is receiving “appropriate medical care.”

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Among the complaints made by Clark and Muslim friends of Rahman’s are that prison officials have taken away his special Arabic Braille watch and compass. The blind cleric does not know the time of day and direction of Mecca that he must face to pray, they say.

Authorities said “limiting some privileges” is in accordance with the rules Reno introduced in May 1996 for prisoners linked to terrorism. The rules restrict phone contact with his two wives in Egypt to once a month.

Craig said he could not comment on a complaint from some Muslim community leaders that Rahman sometimes is served pork, which his religious beliefs prohibit him from eating.

Brian Jenkins, a terrorism expert at Kroll Associates of Los Angeles, said a key to understanding the controversy is that Rahman is being “subjected to all the indignities endemic in the prison system. And the reaction of his admirers is fierce, as if Italian police were to strip-search the pope.”

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Times staff writer Kenneth Reich in Los Angeles contributed to this story.