Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya
Born to a mill foreman in Kafr Dawar, Egypt, Abouhalima spent his adolescence with the Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, an outlawed Islamic group that heralded Omar Abdel Rahman as their spiritual leader. He briefly attended Alexandria University, but dropped out and left Egypt altogether in 1981, moving to Germany. There, he later recalled he had lived a life "of corruption - girls, drugs, you name it".