An extremist cleric who is believed to have masterminded the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center has died in jail.

Blind sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman was jailed for life for conspiring with those who carried out the New York City bombing, which killed six people and injured more than 1,000 others.

He was also convicted of planning more attacks on New York City landmarks, including the United Nations and several bridges and tunnels, as part of a "war of urban terrorism".

Authorities said the 78-year-old died in a North Carolina prison after a long battle with diabetes and coronary artery disease.

Image: The cleric's followers were linked to terror attacks across the world

Before emigrating to the US in 1990, Abdel-Rahman led the militant Al-Gamaa al-Islamiya group in Egypt.


He was accused of issuing a fatwa which led to the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1986, but was eventually acquitted.

A year after arriving in New York City, Abdel-Rahman was given permanent US resident status and began preaching in Brooklyn and New Jersey.

The fundamentalist cleric's followers were linked to terror attacks across the world, including the 1990 assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York and the 1992 killing of a writer in Egypt.

Image: Six people died in the World Trade Center bombing

Following a nine-month trial in 1995, Abdel-Rahman was found guilty on 48 of 50 charges - which included plots to kill Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, a Jewish New York state legislator and a Jewish New York State Supreme Court justice.

During a sentencing hearing, the cleric gave a 90-minute speech in which he claimed he had not "committed any crime except telling people about Islam".

A year before his followers killed 2,996 people in the September 11 attacks, Osama bin Laden pledged a jihad to free Abdel-Rahman from jail.

In 2012, Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi called for the cleric to be sent home in a prisoner exchange with the US for "humanitarian reasons".