US investigators yesterday tried to piece together terrorism connections of a Nigerian man who has been charged with attempting to blow up a US jetliner after reportedly confessing that he had been trained by al-Qaeda in Yemen.
Airport security was stepped up worldwide after the botched terror attack as police in London combed premises where the suspect, the son of a wealthy Nigerian banker, was thought to have lived as a university student.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was arraigned on Saturday at the US hospital where he was being treated for burns sustained while trying to bring down a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit with 290 people on board.
Judge Paul Borman read the charges against him during a 20-minute hearing. Reporters allowed to witness the event said Abdulmutallab was handcuffed to a wheelchair and wore bandages on both wrists and parts of his hands.
A preliminary FBI analysis found that the device Abdulmutallab used “contained PETN, also known as pentaerythritol, a high explosive,” the charge sheet said.
The explosive was allegedly sewn into Abdulmutallab’s underwear and was not detected by airport security, ABC News reported.
Abdulmutallab confessed that he had mixed a syringe full of chemicals with powder taped to his leg to try to blow up the Detroit-bound flight, senior officials were quoted by US media as saying.
Officials believe tragedy was averted only because the makeshift detonator failed to work properly, ABC News said.
Other law enforcement officials quoted by ABC News and NBC said the suspect also said that al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen trained him on how to carry out the attack.
The New York Times said that Abdulmutallab told FBI agents he was connected to an al-Qaeda affiliate, which operates largely in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, by a radical Yemeni cleric whom he contacted online.
NOT AL-AWLAKI
But the newspaper said the cleric is not believed to be Anwar al-Awlaki, an US-born imam who has spoken in favor of anti-US violence and who corresponded with Major Nidal Hasan, the US Army psychiatrist accused of killings 13 people in a shooting spree last month at Fort Hood, Texas.
The failed attack “shows that we must remain vigilant in the fight against terrorism at all times,” US Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement.
However, questions mounted on whether security at major airports inside and outside the US was adequate, despite all the recent upgrades.
“We’ve known for a long time that this is possible,” Richard Clarke, a former White House anti-terrorism czar, told ABC News, referring to chemical explosives.
“We really have to replace our scanning devices with more modern systems.”
Clarke said full body scans were needed, “but they’re expensive and they’re intrusive. They invade people’s privacy.”
The attack on the Airbus A330 had echoes of British-born Richard Reid’s botched “shoe-bomb” attempt almost eight years ago to the day.
Police searched addresses in London, including an upscale mansion flat where the suspect is believed to have lived while studying mechanical engineering at University College London between 2005 and last year.
WARNING
Abdulmutallab’s father, Umaru Mutallab, was so worried about his son’s religious extremism that he contacted the US embassy in Abuja to express his concern last month, a US official told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The official said Abdulmutallab had been added to a broad terrorism watchlist, but was not flagged for mandatory secondary screening or put on a no-fly list.
Meanwhile, a passenger on Northwest Airlines Flight 253, Dutch video producer and director Jasper Schuringa, was achieving cult status on the Internet for tackling the would-be bomber and helping the crew to restrain him.
Schuringa told CNN he had jumped over the passenger next to him and lunged onto Abdulmutallab’s seat as the suspect held a burning object between his legs.
“I pulled the object from him and tried to extinguish the fire with my hands and threw it away,” said Schuringa, adding that he stripped off the suspect’s clothes to check for explosives before a crew member helped handcuff him.
US President Barack Obama, vacationing in Hawaii with his family, ordered security measures to be increased at airports and held a conference call with his security team.
The Department of Homeland Security said it implemented additional flight screening measures and urged holiday travelers to remain vigilant.
Checks were tightened on Saturday at major world airports, including in Paris, Rome and London. Extra measures included frisking of passengers and searching hand baggage.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
RSS