their granting of permission to the United States to station troops in Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf War against Saddam Hussein. Bin Laden believed he should lead the fight against Saddam using Afghan Arab forces. Al-Turabi granted bin Laden a safe place from which to conduct jihadist activities; in return, bin Laden agreed to help the Sudanese government in roadbuilding and to fight animist and Christian separatists in Southern Sudan. While in Sudan, bin Laden is reported to have married one of al-Turabi's nieces. Other violent groups al-Turabi invited and allowed to operate freely included Abu Nidal Organization, (which reportedly had killed more than 900 people in 20 different countries); and Hezbollah, and Ilich Ramirez Sanchez (Venezuelan), aka "Carlos the Jackal", now posing as a French arms dealer at the time. Carlos had converted from Marxism to Islamic extremism. (Sudanese sanctuary was not unconditional as it later allowed French intelligence to kidnap Carlos the Jackal while he was undergoing an operation on his right testicle.") Al-Turabi founded the Popular Arab and Islamic Congress in 1990–1991. Meeting here were several Islamic groups from around the world, including representatives from the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Algerian Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah. Turabi sought to persuade Shiites and Sunnis to put aside their divisions and join against the common enemy. In late 1991 or 1992. In August 1993, Sudan was placed on the United States' list of "state sponsor of terrorism against other state" following the first World Trade Center bombing in February. The U.S. State Department notes that "five of 15 suspects arrested" following the bombing were Sudanese. Mubarak assassination attempt Two years later an assassination attempt was made on then Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak by Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization, many of whose members were living in exile in Sudan. Evidence from the Egyptian and Ethiopian governments implicated the Sudanese governmentThe debacle led to a unanimous vote in the United Nations to impose stiff economic sanctions on Sudan. The Sudanese representative denied the charges, but the Sudanese delegation was already in disfavor, having been implicated only two years earlier in a plot to blow up UN headquarters. Rather than disassociate himself from the plot, al-Turabi praised the attempted killing and called Mubarak stupid: The sons of the Prophet Moses, the Muslims, rose up against him confounded his plans, and sent him back to his country...I found the man to