Ramzi Yousef is not an Iraqi national but a Pakistani from the region of Mand in Makran in the Turbat District of Balochistan province of Pakistan. His real name is Abdul Karim Rind and he is 36 years old. He grew up in Kuwait where he met the Palestinian Hamas group and started his career in terrorism. Although direct Ramzi Yousef`s contacts with Pakistani intelligence agencies have never been established, Islamists in Pakistan believe that he was protected as an asset.

Yousef built up a network, which was in direct contact with the Mindanao and Moro Muslim liberation fronts in the Philippines, and with US and European Muslim converts, had its logistics support coming from coastal Makran in Pakistan.

The main financiers of the Ramzi Yousef group were Saudi nationals living in Karachi, United Arab Emirates, Oman and Bahrain. It is important to note that Ramzi connection, though a Sunni Wahabite network, had collaborated with the Iranian networks in establishing training camps in Sudan. Ramzi Yousef was financed for his studies in electronics and chemical engineering in the UK by a Saudi national in 1984.

He an eye injury in a minor explosion which occurred while he was preparing an explosive device in Karachi. He was treated in 1989 September in Karachi at the Akhtar Eye Hospital guarded by four Makranis and his bills at the hospital were paid by a Karachi-based Saudi importer.

The Ramzi Yousef network is reported to have been aided by terrorists who had worked with the Red Brigade in Europe. In Sudan, Carlos, the famous Chilean terrorist, now in a French prison, is understood to have been a Ramzi contact. One of the tasks of the Ramzi network was the infiltration and training of Sunni militants in Iran, via the Makran coast. The Inter Services Intelligence of Pakistan is believed to have played an important role in providing facilities in Makran; specially in the regions near Iran and Afghanistan. This included protection of Iranian Sunni groups of traffickers and arms dealers who had settled down in the Pakistani Makran after the fall of the Shah of Iran.