forum
Sunday, December 27th, 2009home | Posted by Editor - Blog News Service

More details surrounding suspected Airplane Terrorist: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab

Suspected Terrorist

Suspected Terrorist

What We Know About Terror Suspect
December 26th, 2009, 12:52 PM UTC

We have a running thread on what is known so far about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, or Abdul Mudallad, or Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, or Abdul Farouk Mutallab, depending up on which source you reference.

* He’s Nigerian.

* He’s 23.

* He claims to be working with al Qaeda.

* He was on a “U.S. government watch list of people with suspected terrorist ties” — but not a no-fly list.

* He traveled from Lagos to Amsterdam to Detroit. He was traveling one way — no return ticket.

* He’s being treated for burns in Detroit, thanks to the aforementioned failed attempt. Well, better him than anyone else (though there were a few passengers injured, not seriously). Certainly better than if he had been successful.

* He is the son of the recently retired Chairman of First Bank of Nigeria, Dr. Umaru Abdul Mutallab.

* The Al-Qaida-linked Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab is an engineering student at University College London. Saharareporters sources have revealed that prior to his sojourn in the UK, Farouk had studied at the prestigious British School of Lome, Togo. Where he passed his International Bacchalaureates Diploma before moving to UCL.

* The younger Muttallab lives in a £4 million pounds apartment in Central London, although he is only a student. The apartment, Flat 16, no 2 Mansfield Street in London, W1G9NE is registered to a US company and has been raided by UK security agents today.

* Family sources that declined to be named told Saharareporters that in 2008, Farouk has left the London school and frequented Yemen. He told his friends and relatives that he wanted to study Arabic, a decision that came after he reportedly met Islamic radical elements in London.

Umar Farok Abdul Mutallab has been charged in terrorist attack on Flight 253. The Christmas Day attack was perpetrated by the 23-year-old Nigerian as the Northwest Airlines flight 253 from Amsterdam, The Netherlands began its descent into the Detroit, Michigan, USA airport with 278 souls on board.

Witnesses say that Abdul Mutallab (also spelled Abdulmutallab) went to the bathroom and stayed there about 20-minutes. When he returned to his seat he stated he had an upset stomach and pulled his blanket over himself. Immediately after that, witnesses heard crackling sounds, then a sound like a loud firecracker. Then passengers saw flames engulfing Abdul Mutallab’s pant legs and the wall of the plane. Fellow passenger Jasper Schuringa, a Dutchman who was seated on the opposite side of the same row of seats, jumped across other passengers to tackle the would-be terrorist, subdue him, put out the fire and assist the flight crew in containing the situation.

It is being reported that Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, a student at the University College London, had smuggled the explosives onto the plane by hiding them in his groin. Preliminary FBI analysis found that the device contained PETN, also known as pentaerythritol. It is considered highly explosive and used as a detonator. Fortunately, the device failed to detonate, popping a much smaller explosion and catching fire instead. He suffered second and third-degree burns. He was immediately taken into the custody of the FBI and treated at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

U.S. District Judge Paul Borman went to see the terrorist in the hospital and brought charges against him. He has been charged with a federal criminal complaint of the willful attempt to destroy the aircraft on its final approach to the Detroit airport and with placing a destructive device on the aircraft. If convicted, he would face 20-years in prison on each charge and up to $250,000 in fines. However, these charges are primarily being used so that he can continue to be held while the investigation is on-going.

Abdul Mutallab’s father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, has told reporters that he warned the U.S. Embassy six months ago that his son had been radicalized. The father said he was surprised his son had been allowed to enter the United States considering his radical islamic views. The father is a wealthy Nigerian banker. The terrorist suspect lived in a multi-million dollar apartment in an exclusive area of London.

While the investigation into the Christmas Day attack continues, Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab was charged in terrorist attack on Flight 253. He is scheduled to be in U.S. District Court at 1 p.m. on January 8, 2010 for a detention hearing and preliminary exam. There will be a hearing on Monday, December 28, 2009, to hear a U.S. Attorney’s Office warrant request to collect DNA from the suspect.

You can watch the video below about the charges against Abdulmutallab.

The U.S. government created a record on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in November 2009 in the intelligence community’s central repository of information on known and suspected international terrorists, but there was not enough negative information to put him on a no-fly list, a U.S. administration official said on Saturday.

There are 550,000 individuals contained in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment repository, where a record of Abdulmutallab was created.

There was not enough negative information to include his name in a subset of that group, the Terrorist Screening Data Base (TSDB) that has more than 400,000 individuals and is the main identities database within the U.S. government for international terrorism, the official said.

Less than 4,000 of the names in the TSDB are on the “No Fly” list and another 14,000 names are on the “Selectee” list, which calls for mandatory secondary screening, the official said.

“There was insufficient derogatory information available on the subject at that time to include him in the TSDB or its ‘no fly’ or ’selectee’ lists,” the official said. “Thus, he was not watchlisted as of 25 December 2009.”

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, suspected of attempting to detonate an explosive device on a plane bound for Detroit on Friday, had been on a list of people with known or suspected ties to terrorism for at least two years, Fox News confirmed Saturday.

Abdulmutallab was on the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment list that is maintained by the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center and contains people who have loose ties or possible links to terrorism.

People on the list are not necessarily on the no-fly list, or those who are not permitted to board commercial aircraft to or from the U.S.

Abdulmutallab reportedly had links with US-born Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, according to Sky News sources.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) told Fox News it was “very disturbing” that Abdulmutallab been allowed to fly, in an interview with Fox News.

He said that if Abdulmutallab had indeed been in Yemen it should have elevated him to the no-fly list.

Abdulmutallab was subdued before his attack could be fully carried out and the plane landed Friday without fatalities. He received third-degree burns during the terror attempt.

Al-Awlaki, who is thought to have died in a Yemeni airstrike on an al Qaeda meeting December 24, also had links with the shooter who killed 13 people and injured 30 others at a US army base in Texas on Nov. 5.

Translate this post
        
        
Related Posts Related Websites

Tags: , ,

Comments are closed

participate