HE GREW up amid extraordinary privilege – a wealthy Nigerian banker’s son who attended top international schools and had travelled to the United States. But sometime this year, according to relatives’ accounts, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab became an enemy of the West.
As a college student living in London and Dubai, Abdulmutallab (23), had worried his family with his embrace of an increasingly radical view of Islam. Then, about six months ago, he renounced his wealthy lifestyle, broke all ties with his parents and disappeared. Family members suspected he had gone to Yemen, his mother’s native country.
On Friday, Abdulmutallab surfaced again when he was arrested for attempting to set off a bomb hidden in his clothing while flying in a jetliner packed with holiday travellers. He told US investigators he was striking a blow for a Yemeni branch of al-Qaeda, a group that two months ago called on its followers to kill “apostates” and Westerners by using all means, including home-brewed explosives on aircraft.
To what degree Abdulmutallab was involved with the group remained under investigation. But US counterterrorism and law-enforcement officials said on Saturday that the suspect appeared to have been both equipped and motivated to carry out a deadly attack. They said he also had the advantage of easy access to US and European targets, owing to his Western education, fluency in English and a multiple-entry US visa.
US sources said the suspect’s mode of attack – detonating a few grammes of the powerful military explosive PETN, hidden on his body – is similar to tactics used by another failed suicide bomber with known links to al-Qaeda’s Yemeni branch.
Federal investigators were starting to comb through the suspect’s finances, contacts and travels to “work backwards to try to trace his steps for the last several weeks and months”, a law enforcement source said.
Although authorities were operating under the theory that he acted alone, they did not rule out the possibility that others – including al-Qaeda operatives – knew about or helped the man in the weeks leading up to the Detroit incident, the source said.
The investigation will include interviews with the accused bomber’s friends and relatives in Nigeria and London. Some family members have already publicly said they were saddened at the news of Abdulmutallab’s arrest, but not particularly surprised.
His father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, the recently retired chairman of one of Nigeria’s top banks and a frequent visitor to the US, acknowledged in several media interviews that the suspect is his son. He said he had alerted Nigerian and US embassy officials six months ago about his son’s increasingly militant views and unusual behaviour, and was surprised to learn the young man had been allowed to travel to the US.
In an interview with the Associated Press, he said he thought his son “might have been to Yemen” in the months since he severed ties with the family.
A Nigerian newspaper, This Day, quoted relatives that the family had been "uncomfortable with the boy's extreme religious views", leading to the decision to alert law enforcement officials.
A US official said the father’s warning did not go unheeded. “We didn’t sit on the information. It was shared across the interagency,” said the official, who spoke on condition on anonymity, referring to the group of US agencies tasked with preventing terrorist attacks.
Abdulmutallab grew up in one of Nigeria’s most affluent families, with luxury houses in Lagos and central London. According to relatives, he developed an early reputation as a serious, devoutly religious young man, even during his high school years. His frequent sermonising earned him the nickname “Alfa”, a local term for an Islamic scholar.
After graduating, he studied at University College London and earned a degree in mechanical engineering. Last year he moved to Dubai to continue his studies, and while there he announced to family members he was breaking off contact and travelling to a place he could not be reached at, according to relatives’ accounts.
How and whether he came into contact with al-Qaeda operatives could not be independently verified. But Peter Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House intelligence committee, said he had been told by credible sources the US government knew Abdulmutallab was “involved with al-Qaeda” for at least a couple of months, perhaps even “a couple of years”, he said.
– (The Washington Post)