By Nicholas Ibekwe
The New York Times, through a Freedom
of Information Act request, has obtained documents containing detailed accounts
of how slain Al Qaeda leader, Anwar al-Awlaki, mentored a Nigerian, Farouk
Abdulmutallab, who tried to explode a bomb hidden in his underpants, on a
flight from Amsterdam in the Netherlands to Detroit, United States, on
Christmas Day in 2009.
Jailed Farouk Abdulmutallab, (inset) his bomber pants |
Mr. Abdulmutallab, commonly referred to
as the "underwear bomber" by United States media, is the son of
former chairman of First Bank Plc, Umaru Abdulmutallab. In 2012, he was
sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after a defiant
guilty plea.
The 200-page redacted documents, which
contained information obtained from Mr Abdulmutallab through extensive
interviews, was released to the newspaper after two years of legal struggle.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation,
FBI, had kept the account a secret and rejected a request made by an author of
a 2015 book on the life of Mr. al-Awlaki, an American-born islamic cleric,
forcing the New York Times to sue to obtain the documents.
Last December a federal judge, Ronnie
Abrams, ordered the FBI to release the document to the newspaper.
Mr. al-Awlaki was killed by a drone
strike ordered by former President Barack Obama in 2011. He was the first American
to be killed by the deliberate order of a U.S. president since the Civil
War.
In a series of interviews with the FBI,
Mr. Abdulmutallab, a wealthy 23-year-old studying engineering at the University
College, London, revealed his journey towards radicalisation and how he sought
out Mr al-Awlaki, who mentored him into becoming a suicide bomber.
Mr. Abdulmutallab told FBI agent about
how he first encountered the Al-Qaeda leader through a recorded lecture he
bought from an Islamic store in the United Kingdom in 2005. He became enamored
by his teachings.
After a trip to the United Arab
Emirates in 2009, he said he felt "God was guiding him to jihad." He
travelled to Yemen to meet the Mr. al-Awkali, who then had fully embraced
violence and was a rising Al Qaeda leader.
From then Mr. al-Awkali transcended
from being his religious hero into his tutor on how to become a jihadist. Mr.
Abdulmutallab told agents that the cleric did not only oversee his training in
Yemen, but also conceived the plot leading to the failed bomb attack.
According to the
report, Mr. Abdulmutallab in series of interviews described every person he
remembered meeting from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsul, as the Yemen branch
of the terrorist group is known. He also provided agents with vivid description
of the layout of training camps, Mr. al-Awlaki's house and many other Qaeda
buildings. According to the New York Times, his descriptions were so precise
that they may have aided the U.S.in its drone campaign in Yemen.
He said Mr. al-Awlaki, who was called
"sheikh" out of respect, introduced him to other Al Qaeda trainers
and bomb makers. The American, Mr. Abdulmutallab told the FBI, taught him how
to prepare a martydom video, advising him to "keep it short and reference
the Quran."
Mr. al-Awkali told Mr. Abdulmutallab to
hide his trail by first traveling from Yemen to an African country before
booking a flight on which he planned to detonate the bomb.
Mr. Abdulmutallab flew from Ghana to
Amsterdam before joining Northwest Airlines Flight 253 to Detroit.
He said the choice of the date for the
attack had no special significance and was mainly dictated by ticket prices and
flight schedules.
Before he departed, Mr. al-Awlaki sent
him a final reminder: "Wait until you are in the U.S., then bring the
plane down."
He said he followed the progress of the
flight on the seat-back screen. He waited until he approached the US border and
went to the plane's bathroom to make final preparations for the attack.
He thought of detonating the bomb in
the bathroom but wanted to be certain that he was doing so over US soil, so he
returned to his seat to check the map for a final time before igniting the
explosives.
Maybe due to excess moisture, the bomb
did not explode but let out a flame. As he tried to get his burning pants off,
passengers pounced on him. One passenger punched him and a crew member
threatened to throw him out of the plane.
He began confessing to the terror act
even before leaving the plane. He said he was a member of Al Qaeda and that he
had tried to set off a bomb. He later stopped talking and needed the presence
of his relatives who were flown by U.S. authorities from Nigeria to persuade
him to become cooperative again.
·
Source: Premium Times
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