Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman
Professor
of shari'a law (at the University of Jordan) before joining the jihad. A Jury
convicted Sheikh Rahman and nine other co-defendants of conspiring to wage a
terrorist war against the United States. They were found guilty of conspiring to
bomb the World Trade Center and other New York landmarks such as the United
Nations Federal Plaza and the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, as well as plotting
to assassinate public figures. The man convicted in New York of being the
ultimate mastermind of these bomb plots was Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, an
Egyptian Islamic religious leader who had been closely associated with the
Islamic fundamentalist unrest in Egypt.Sheikh Omar confounded prison
officials by refusing to take his medications for diabetes,
high blood pressure, and a heart condition. He had been accused of inciting the
assassination of President Anwar Sadat and repeatedly arrested and imprisoned by
the authorities for several years for allegedly inciting civil unrest. He was
eventually deported by Egypt to Sudan.
Gerald Birnbaum
Medical Doctor Imposter
Martin Cahill
famous (or infamous)
Irish gangster, had type 2 diabetes. Cahill is the subject of the current movie,
"The General." The movie covers his diagnosis, shows him injecting
himself with insulin and saying no to dessert at a restaurant. Cahill is famous
for the largest robberies in Ireland (though rarely could the authorities catch
him with evidence) during the 1970s and 1980s (I believe), including some famous
paintings, many of which are still missing. He was shot to death in 1994, I
believe. Info supplied by Sharon Kellaher.
Ralph (Raffie) Cuomo
Luchese mobster
Ralph (Raffie) Cuomo, who founded the original Ray's Pizza in 1959 and
still manages the place, is going to prison for using his landmark Prince
Street pizzeria to sell heroin along with pies. Cuomo begins a four year
sentence next month in a sweet deal that was an accommodation to the
62-year-old mobster, who recently underwent back surgery and suffers heart
disease and diabetes.
He admitted only to using the pizzeria's telephones to discuss drug sales with
fellow mobster Frank Gioia Jr., but Cuomo's been running a lucrative heroin
business out of the pizzeria's basement for decades.
Lydia Echevarria
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP)
- Puerto Rican authorities on Thursday January27,2000 freed an
actress convicted of
murder more than a decade ago for hiring hit men to kill her husband.
The parole board decided to free Lydia Echevarria, upholding Gov. Pedro
Rossello's decision last month to grant her clemency for health reasons.
Echevarria was sentenced to 208 years in jail for the 1983 death of her husband
Luis Vigoreaux, a television producer and variety show host. Suffering
from diabetes,
Echevarria left the prison in a wheelchair.
``Thanks to God,''
she said as she was taken to a van that whisked her past the gates of the
Women's Prison in Vega Alta, about 20 miles southwest of San Juan. Dozens
of reporters and onlookers were crowded outside the prison awaiting her
release. Echevarria, 68, was convicted of murder in 1986 for hiring
killers who
kidnapped Vigoreaux,
beat him with a tire iron, stabbed him with an ice pick and then locked
him in the trunk of his car and set it ablaze, burning him alive.
Prosecutors said Echevarria was angry because she suspected Vigoreaux was
going to leave her for a younger woman. Echevarria was known for her roles
in local theater and television, and she appeared on Vigoreaux's show.
The five-member parole board had the final say over whether to allow her to go
free because Rossello stopped short of granting a full pardon. Echevarria's
release was fought by stepsons Roberto Vigoreaux, a local legislator, and
Luis Vigoreaux Jr., himself a variety show host. Daughters Glendaly and
Vanessa supported the clemency.
Jeanne-Marie Gagneux
Marijuana Smuggler
Madalyn Murray O'Hair
Famous U.S. Aetheist
Marie Noe
An elderly Philadelphia
woman Monday admitted that she smothered eight of her 10 infant children over a
19-year period beginning in 1949. Marie Noe, 70, as of June 28,1999, a
gaunt white-haired woman who suffers from diabetes and arthritis, had maintained
for decades that her children had succumbed to crib death, now known as sudden
infant death syndrome, while police reported that they could find no evidence of
foul play.A 1963 article in Life magazine cast the housewife and part-time
factory worker from Philadelphia's Kensington section as one of the most
bereaved mothers in America. But Monday (June 28,1999), 10 months after her
arrest for murder, Noe pleaded guilty to eight counts of second-degree murder in
Philadelphia County Common Pleas Court, as part of an agreement with prosecutors
that will allow her to avoid prison. Noe agreed to spend 20 years on probation,
including five years of house arrest that will require her to wear an electronic
ankle bracelet. She also must undergo intensive psychiatric therapy, which
officials hope will shed new light on the causes of parental infanticide. `I
don't know any other person accused of this type of crime in the history of the
world who has ever come forward to work with doctors the way this woman is
willing to,'' said her attorney, David Rudenstein. Noe and her 77-year-old
husband, Arthur, a retired machinist, had 10 children in all. One was stillborn
and another died in the hospital shortly after birth. But eight other boys and
girls -- aged 13 days to 14 months -- died between 1949 and the 1960s, even
though each had been normal at birth and were healthy and developing well until
the time of their death. Police detectives who questioned Noe several times over
the years were suspicious of her, as were some medical examiners. Then in 1998,
30 years after the last child's death, city police reopened the cases when an
article in Philadelphia Magazine contended that most multiple crib deaths from
the same family should be considered possible homicides. According to court
papers, two Philadelphia medical examiners reviewed death certificates and
available autopsy reports. Both concluded that all eight infants had been
suffocated. Police who questioned Noe last year said she appeared to implicate
herself in the deaths of her son Richard Alan, who was born in 1949, as well as
in those of her daughters Elizabeth Mary, Jacqueline and Constance, who all died
in the 1950s. Noe was initially charged in August but released on bail. Police
said Noe's husband Arthur was not charged because he was not at home at the time
of any of the deaths and they came to the conclusion he had no part in the
crime.
Jean Pouliot
NEWS:9-22-1999
Police Chief of Fairfield
Maine
The town of
Fairfield Maine is reportedly trying to work out a severance agreement
with embattled Police Chief Jean Pouliot. "The Bangor Daily News"
reports that the Town Council may be voting on some sort of severance package
when it meets in closed session this evening in exchange for Pouliot's
resignation from the force after ten years. Pouliot was suspended in
August for purchasing 250-dollars worth of personal items with the town's
credit card, and has remained on medical leave for diabetes.
A special audit was ordered in an attempt to locate the
33-thousand-dollars Pouliot's department spent over its budget.
Nguyen Ngoc Tan
NEWS:May 11,2000 Vietnamese
Journalist Nguyen Ngoc Tan Is Freed
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) - A Vietnamese
journalist who spent five years in jail for advocating human rights was
released as part of a presidential amnesty for more than 12,000 inmates, a
Paris-based media advocacy group said Thursday. Nguyen Ngoc Tan, 80, who
went by his pen name Pham Thai, had been an activist in the Movement for
the Unity of the People and Construction of Democracy, Reporters Without
Borders said in a statement. He had pushed for press freedoms as a member
of the underground group that advocated human rights and democracy in
Vietnam. Tan was arrested in 1995 and sentenced to 11 years in prison
for ``conspiring against the socialist power.'' He was released April 30
from Ham Tan labor camp, on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City.
Reporters Without Borders welcomed Tan's release, saying it ``regrets it
did not come sooner.'' Tan, who is suffering from diabetes,
rheumatism and lung infections, has returned to Ho Chi Minh City. His
colleague, Nguyen Dinh Huy, remains as the last journalist jailed in the
country, the group said. Last month, Vietnam pardoned 12,264 inmates in
its largest amnesty ever to mark the 25th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam
War.
Vietnam repeatedly has said its prisoners
include only lawbreakers, and that no one is in jail for dissident views. Human
rights groups have estimated, though, that Vietnam
holds at least 40 prisoners of
conscience.
Arnold W. Webster
NEWS:August 12,1999
Former N.J. Mayor
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) - A former mayor was sentenced to six months of house arrest
for illegally receiving $20,833 in salary from a previous job after he took
office. Arnold W. Webster, 68, could have faced up to 16 months in prison. A
federal judge granted a request for no incarceration from Webster's lawyer, who
noted that the former mayor is blind and suffers from a heart condition and diabetes.
Instead, Webster was sentenced to house arrest and
three years of probation. U.S. District Judge Alfred Wolin also ordered him to
repay all the money and assessed a $1,000 fine. Webster was sworn in as mayor
earlier than scheduled and a school computer kept sending him checks for his
work as superintendent because it didn't have the new date in its system,
Webster's lawyer said.
Michael Wilson
Coney Island Side Show
Performer "Illustrated Man" TATTOO'S