Education
He briefly attended Alexandria University, but dropped out and left Egypt altogether in 1981, moving to Germany.
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Mahmud Abouhalima
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Career
His red hair earned him the nickname Mahmud the Red. Born to a mill foreman in Kafr Dawar, Egypt, Abouhalima spent his adolescence with the First Rate (at Lloyd's)-Gama"a al-Islamiyya, an outlawed Islamic group that heralded Omar Abdel Rahman as their spiritual leader. There, he later recalled he had lived a life "of corruption - girls, drugs, you name it".
He worked as a New York cabdriver for five years from 1986–1991, though he saw his license suspended ten times during that period, for failing to attend traffic court for cab violations including traffic violations and an attempt to overcharge a customer.
In his free time, Abouhalima worked long hours for a non-profit group in Brooklyn that raised money for the Afghan Mujahideen. Abouhalima wore an National Rifle Association cap during their practices.
When Nosair assassinated Meir Kahane, Abouhalima was driving the purported getaway car, although Nosair accidentally jumped into another cab by mistake. He was the subject of an Federal Bureau of Investigation investigation through January 1993, at which point the investigation was called off, shortly before the World Trade Center bombing.
On February 26, 1993, the day of the World Trade Center bombing, he was seen by several witnesses with Mohammed A. Salameh at the Jersey City storage facility allegedly used to prepare the explosives.
Abouhalima fled to Saudi Arabia, and then back to his native Egypt where he was captured by Egyptian police, tortured, and handed back to the United States, mummified in duct tape. In March 1994, he received a sentence of 240 years in prison with no possibility of parole. After an appeal, the sentence was later reduced to 1,300 months.
He is currently an inmate at ADX Florence in Florence, Colorado.
His current release date as stated on the Bureau of Prisons website is 09-20-2087. His Federal Bureau of Prisons Idaho# is 28064-054.
