Abdulmutallab’s bomb plans began with classroom defence of 9/11

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, pictured in the red jacket, on a school trip to London
Dominic Kennedy, Investigations Editor
www.timesonline.co.uk

The rich kid with a brilliant school record was a ticking time bomb even before he turned up as an international student living in his father’s mansion block apartment in Britain.

Classmates remember Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as such a pious youth that he was nicknamed “the Pope”.

Suicide bombers typically take half a dozen years to descend from religious fanaticism to “martyrdom”, which appears to be the case for this young Nigerian, a security expert said.

Acting alone as a “clean skin” rather than by mingling with any gang of British plotters, he evaded the kind of close scrutiny that known radical suspects now endure. If, as suggested, he made contact with the Yemen-based cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, an idol for the mass murderer at the US military base Fort Hood, he could have done that via his computer screen.

His last appearance was in a green hospital gown, his left hand bandaged and cuffed to his wheelchair at a hospital in Michigan on Boxing Day. After being wheeled in by agents, the charges were read to Mr Abdulmutallab by US District Judge Paul Borman.

The Nigerian is accused of attempting to destroy an airliner and putting a destructive device on it. He faces a maximum 20 years’ imprisonment.

The 23-year-old suspect is the son of one of the richest men in Africa. Alhaji Uma Mutallab, 70, is a former chairman of First Bank and Nigeria’s ex-Federal Commissioner for Economic Development. Mr Mutallab’s wife is reported to be from Yemen. The family live in Funtua, in the state of Katsina in Muslim north Nigeria.

Their son was sent to the British International School at Lomé, in Togo, where he is remembered for his religious fervour. During Ramadan he declined to join fellow pupils going to a disco, telling them that it would be un-Islamic. He defended 9/11 as an act of war, saying that it might have been necessary because there were American troops on Saudi soil.

“He did have this saintly aura,” said Michael Rimmer, a Briton who taught Mr Abdulmutallab history. Mr Rimmer added that sometimes he expressed religious opinions that were “a bit over the top”.

“In 2001 we had a number of class discussions about the Taleban. All the other Muslim kids thought they were a bunch of nutters, but Umar spoke in their defence.”

Charles Anaman, a former school friend, recalled more innocent shared pastimes: playing basketball, watching videos, listening to hip-hop music. “He was a calm person,” Mr Anaman said.

Mr Abdulmutallab won a place at University College London to study mechanical engineering and stayed there for three years from 2005. Home was the family’s three-bedroom basement apartment in Mansfield Street, near Harley Street, which the police have been searching.

In June 2008 he was given a four-year multiple-entry visa for the United States by the American Consulate in London. He visited Houston for 11 days that August.

The rift with his family worsened because of his “extreme views about religion”, according to a brother quoted by the Nigerian newspaper This Day. He told his family that he wanted to go to an Arab country to learn Arabic.

For a while he was in Egypt, but his family encouraged him to take a postgraduate degree in business studies in Dubai. They hoped that the cosmopolitan atmosphere would prevent him from becoming even more extreme.

However, he abandoned the United Arab Emirates, saying that he had found an alternative course in Yemen that would take seven years to complete. When his mother asked him to reconsider, he told her to stay away because he had found a new life and was breaking all family ties.

“We know Farouk’s extreme views and were always apprehensive of where it may lead him to,” the unidentified brother said. “He has maintained his distance from us and we never bothered him much. He always wanted to be left alone, so we respect his wishes.” The brother said that the bomb suspect was “quiet, nice and gentle” and “morally upright”.

British authorities refused him a visa in May because they suspected that he was trying to attend a bogus college course. Soon afterwards his father became so concerned with his extremist views that he alerted the US Embassy in Nigeria, Nigerian security and the Saudis. The family last had contact with Mr Abdulmutallab in October when he was in Yemen.

He travelled to Ethiopia and then Ghana. The return ticket for his trip to Detroit, via Amsterdam, was bought at KLM’s office in Accra on December 16 for $2,831 (£1,770). Unusually for a potential suicide bomber, he took the trouble to change his return destination, replacing Ghana with Lagos. He arrived in Nigeria on Christmas Eve.

Last month he was put on the US Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, a watchlist of 550,000 names. He was never regarded as dangerous enough to reach the 4,000-strong “no-fly” list. British authorities have a record of him, believed to be based on the Americans sharing their own list.

According to American sources, Mr Abdulmutallab appears to have been telling all, purporting to have been part of a plot by al-Qaeda in Yemen, which gave him the bomb and instructions to detonate it. Some reports say that he claimed that a cleric in Yemen put him in touch with the bombmaker, who sewed explosive powder into his underwear.

His father said that he was flying from his home to meet Nigerian security officials to talk about his son.

“I have been receiving telephone calls from all over the world about my child who has been arrested for an alleged attempt to bomb a plane.

“I am really disturbed. I would not want to say anything at the moment until I put myself together . . . I have been summoned by the Nigerian security and I am on my way to answer the call,” he said.