A Palestinian accused of entering the United States carrying books on how to make bombs of the sort used to blow up the World Trade Center became the sixth person charged in the attack.
Ahmad Ajaj, a 27-year-old who was deported from Israel in 1991, was charged Thursday with conspiracy to destroy the twin 110-story towers.He has been in jail for most of the past eight months - including the day of the Feb. 26 blast - for illegally entering the country with a forged Swedish passport.
The federal charges linked him directly to at least one of the men previously charged, but the precise role Ajaj is alleged to have played in the bombing was not immediately known.
His lawyer, Lynne Stewart, faxed the charges to The Associated Press. U.S. prosecutors were not immediately available for comment. Stewart said in a statement that Ajaj would be arraigned Friday afternoon.
The bombing killed six people and injured more than 1,000. Investigators said some 500 pounds of chemical explosives were detonated in a van parked in a garage underneath the complex.
The men charged previously all have been linked to mosques in Brooklyn and Jersey City, N.J., where a radical cleric often preached. Stewart said Wednesday that Ajaj did not know any of the others charged in the blast.
Ajaj told The Associated Press recently that he entered the country last year carrying bogus passports and books on making bombs - claims confirmed in the federal charges. Ajaj also told the AP that he came to this country "working for Islam," but he refused to elaborate.
The charges said Ajaj arrived in the United States on Sept. 1 with about 12 bombmaking books, which were seized by federal authorities.
The charges said the manuals contained instructions on the use of chemicals like those found in a New Jersey storage locker where investigators believe the World Trade Center bomb was mixed.
According to charges, the fingerprints of another suspect in the bombing, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, were found on two of the manuals.