.
(Washington Post) — The youngest of 16 children of a prominent Nigerian bank executive, and the son of the second of his father’s two wives, Abdulmutallab was raised at the family home in Kaduna, a city in Nigeria’s Muslim-dominated north, relatives there said. He graduated with an engineering degree from City University in London. Later, his father sent him to Dubai to study for an advanced business degree.
In July, relatives said, his father agreed to his request to study Arabic in Yemen. The family became concerned in August when Abdulmutallab called to say he had dropped the course but would remain in Yemen for an undisclosed purpose. Several days later, they said, he sent a text message saying he was severing all ties with his family.
Relatives said that message provoked his father’s visits to the U.S. Embassy in Abuja and to the Nigerian intelligence service. U.S. intelligence officials insisted Sunday that the visit did not occur until mid-November.
Abdulmutallab’s movements after that are unclear, although Nigeria’s Information Minister Dora Akunyili said Sunday that he “sneaked” into the country on the 24th. He paid cash for a ticket on a Dec. 24 KLM flight from Lagos to Amsterdam, connecting to Northwest 253 to Detroit on Christmas Day.
“The e-ticket was purchased from KLM airport office in Accra [Ghana] on 16th December 2009,” Harold Demuren, a Nigerian aviation official, told a news conference in Lagos. “His passport was scanned, his U.S. visa was scanned, and the APIS [Advanced Passenger Information System] returned with no objection.”
The reforms set up the National Counterterrorism Center, which administers a huge database of terrorism information called the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE.
Each day, thousands of pieces of intelligence information from around the world — field assessments, captured documents, news from foreign allies and the media, and reports from worried fathers — pour into the NCTC computers in McLean. At 11 each night, selected information from TIDE is downloaded into the Terrorist Screening Database, or TSDB, administered by the FBI. Overnight entries are examined each morning by an interagency team drawn from across the government.
Under FBI direction, individuals assessed as significant risks are then “nominated” to specific watch lists, each of which has different criteria. In addition to the “no-fly” and “selectee” lists, the State Department maintains a list of people who should not be granted visas; other lists single out people who cross land borders and domestic fugitives.
In Abdulmutallab’s case, a single, non-specific entry in TIDE was not enough to send his information to the TSDB, so he was never considered for a watch list. Among the gaps in the system already being addressed by computer technicians, officials said, is the absence of an “automatic feedback loop” that would have let TIDE know that the random report from Nigeria referred to a man who already had a valid U.S. entry visa, issued more than a year before.
80 grams PETN Powder and Syringe hidden in underwear
Abdulmutallab was able to carry the powdery substance undetected by concealing it on the inside of his upper thigh, close to his groin – an area likely to avoid detection even by the most conscientious of security officials.
It would appear that he was allowed to take a syringe containing a liquid on board the aircraft by apparently taking advantage of airlines’ policy of allowing diabetics to inject themselves during flight.
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (Daily-Mail) Oct. 5, 2009 – Al-Qaeda has reportedly developed a deadly explosive device that can be hidden in suicide bomber’s intestine and go undetected at airport security checkpoints.
Recently, an Al-Qaeda militant, Abdullah Hassan Tali al-Asiri, passed through several airline security checks with such a bomb hidden in his intestine and made a failed attempt to assassinate a prominent Saudi Prince. Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef is the head of Saudi Arabia’s counter terrorism operations.
According to security experts, the explosive and an electronic detonator were probably contained in a long thin animal gut casing to protect it from stomach acid.
The Saudis believe the bomb weighed 100gm and was made with PETN plastic explosive, to avoid detection by airport and other metal detectors.
“While not wanting to be alarmist, I admit this is alarming,” Richard Barrett, head of the United Nations al-Qaeda and Taliban monitoring group was quoted as saying.
.
LONDON (The Independent) – Mohammed Mutallab, a cousin of the arrested man, has claimed that the 23-year-old came under the influence of extremist groups while in the U.K., and associates claim he visited the East London Mosque, which has attracted criticism for hosting Muslim hardline preachers, three times.
After leaving the UK the student is believed to have visited Dubai, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana and Yemen, where his mother’s family comes from.
Abdulmutallab was denied a British visa in May this year by the UK Border Agency – he claimed he planned to attend a six-month course, but the educational establishment turned out to be bogus.
AL-QAEDA WARNING OF IMMINENT ATTACK
The failed attack will inevitably heighten concern in Washington that Yemen is emerging as a new haven for anti-US terror conspirators. The US gave the government some $70 million in military aid this year and its agencies are known to have been directly involved in executing two deadly airstrikes last week on suspected al-Qa’ida targets inside the country.
The video now under scrutiny was posted on 21 December and was seemingly intended first to eulogise those al-Qa’ida operatives who killed in those strikes. But the speaker on the video also threatened the US saying “we are carrying a bomb to hit the enemies of God“.
Anwar al-Awlaki has support in BritainPre-recorded lecture on “Judgement Day and the Afterlife” by Anwar Al-Awlaki
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
LAGOS, Nigeria (The Guardian) – A US-based Nigerian pro-democratic group, Citizens For Nigeria (CFN), said it is “outraged by the unfortunate set of events through the years in the Nigerian nation that have culminated into this act of terrorism in the US, supposedly by a Nigerian national.”
The CFN was founded by a Nigerian journalist, Tunde Odediran, few years ago in New Jersey, and has now grown to include other active American-Nigerians clamouring for change in Nigeria and holding the Federal Government responsible for the fate of the country.
In a statement issued over the weekend in the US by one of CFN’s officials, Ayo Abimbola, a US military veteran, the group noted that the event involving the Nigerian suspect in Detroit, US, is “a disaster that has been long in coming was averted.
“This happened because a group of selfish Nigerian leaders with Islamic affiliation have, instead of taking the necessary action, quietly aided Islamic fundamentalism for almost 30 years. The Citizens for Nigeria can predict that when Abdul Farouk Abdul Mutallab’s identity is revealed, he will be known to come from the northern part of Nigeria that has always received State protection and patronage for religious persecution.”
CFN recalled that in July, 2009, “when the security forces in northern Nigerian battled the remnants of an Islamic sect loosely modeled after Afghanistan’s Taliban movement, the world did not pay attention.
“In that particular incident, more than 180 people died; and it was a local Nigerian news. Now that a Nigerian, likely affiliated with Al Qaeda, attacked an American airline, the world’s attention will be fixed on Nigeria. To a majority of Nigerians, religious terrorism has a long history.”
Indeed, earlier this year in May, The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) added six new countries to its list of nations responsible for committing violations of religious freedom. Nigeria featured in that list, alongside, Pakistan, Afghanistan, North Korea, China, Iran and Iraq.
≈ Cross-posted from my diary — Nigeria Katsina State and Sharia Law ≈
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."