Meir David HaKohen Kahane, a 58-year-old Jewish male, was a controversial figure, known for his ultranationalist politics and the founding of the Jewish Defense League. On the evening of November 5, 1990, he was in the second-floor lecture hall of the New York Marriott East Side hotel in Manhattan, having just delivered a speech to a group of mostly Orthodox Jews.
As he answered questions from a crowd of well-wishers who had gathered around him, a man disguised as an Orthodox Jew approached him. Shortly after 9:00 p.m., this individual shot Kahane in the neck at close range with a. 357-caliber pistol. Meir Kahane died from his wound shortly thereafter.
The assailant, after shooting Kahane, fled the hotel. As he tried to commandeer a taxi on Lexington Avenue, he was confronted by a U.S. Postal Inspection Service officer named Carlos Acosta. The gunman shot and wounded the officer in the chest. Acosta returned fire, hitting the shooter in the chin, and then arrested him. The suspect was identified as El Sayyid Nosair, an Egyptian-born American citizen.
Nosair was initially charged with the murder of Rabbi Kahane. His trial in 1991 was fraught with tension, marked by violent clashes between supporters of Kahane and Nosair outside the courthouse. The prosecution presented 51 witnesses, some of whom testified to seeing Nosair with a gun moments after the shooting. However, a key weakness in the prosecution's case was the lack of any witness who actually saw Nosair fire the shot that killed Kahane. The defense, led by attorney William Kunstler, argued that Kahane was killed by one of his own followers in a dispute over money. In a verdict that was widely seen as surprising, the jury acquitted Nosair of murder and attempted murder in December 1991, convicting him only on assault and weapons charges. The judge, Alvin Schlesinger, sharply criticized the verdict, calling it 'against the overwhelming weight of evidence' and 'devoid of common sense and logic,' sentencing Nosair to the maximum of 7 to 22 years in prison.
Years later, while serving his sentence, El Sayyid Nosair was implicated in a much larger federal investigation. He was a key figure in the trial of the 'Blind Sheikh,' Omar Abdel-Rahman, and was convicted in 1994 for his involvement in a wide-ranging terrorist conspiracy that included the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In this federal trial, it was ruled that Kahane's murder was part of this 'seditious conspiracy.' Nosair was convicted on nine counts, including murder in aid of racketeering for the killing of Meir Kahane. He later confessed to federal agents that he had assassinated the rabbi. For his role in the conspiracy, Nosair received a sentence of life imprisonment plus 15 years, and he is currently serving that sentence.
