One former resident of Florence is Omar Abdel-Rahman, who is currently in North Carolina incarcerated in a special medical facility. This man was a leader of the Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, which carried out the Luxor Massacre, and issued a fatwa against Anwar Sadat prior to his death. He is more notorious for his conviction on seditious conspiracy in planning the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. One of Abdel-Rahman's lawyers, Lynne Stewart, was sentenced to ten years in prison for providing material support to terrorism for passing along messages from Abdel-Rahman to his followers, and then perjuring herself during trial. By what two-word nickname is Abdel-Rahman known, one word which describes a medical condition, the other word an honorific title roughly meaning "leader".
Blind Sheikh