Yemen confirmed yesterday that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who has been charged with trying to blow up a US-bound airliner, was still in the country earlier this month, after the local al-Qaeda branch claimed the attempted bombing.
“He stayed in Yemen between the beginning of August and the beginning of December, after having received a visa to study Arabic at an institute in Sanaa where he had previously studied,” a Yemeni Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a statement carried by the official Saba news agency.
The spokesman did not provide details on Abdulmutallab’s previous stay in Yemen, saying only that the government gave him a visa after security officials were “reassured that he had been granted visas by friendly countries, and still held a valid visa to the US, where he had visited before.”
Students at the Institute of Languages in Sanaa’s old city said Abdulmutallab studied at the school and lived in student housing. He was in Yemen between August and early this month, they said.
“He was normal and mixed with women and dealt with all people normally,” an American student said, asking not to be identified.
Abdulmutallab, 23, is a Nigerian Muslim and the son of a wealthy banker.
US security officials have saidthat he is suspected of receiving training from al-Qaeda. But the US government has been cautious about linking the failed attack to Osama bin Laden’s network.
Abdulmutallab’s family has said he traveled to Yemen, where he cut ties with them.
The Yemeni spokesman said that security agencies are investigating “the parties with whom the accused Nigerian was in contact during his time in Yemen.”
He said the results will be “sent to US agencies investigating the attempted attack, within the framework of US-Yemeni cooperation on security and fighting terrorism.”
The spokesman condemned the attack, and said his country, “which has suffered much from terrorism,” remains “an active partner in the international community in the war against terrorism.”
“The Yemeni security services continue to track and carry out operations against the terrorists of Al-Qaeda,” he said.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is active in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, said in an Internet posting on Monday that it masterminded the attempted bombing. It said the attack was in response to “unjust American aggression” on the Arabian Peninsula.
The group said a “technical fault” caused the plot’s failure, US monitoring group SITE Intelligence said. The statement was accompanied by a picture of Abdulmutallab, who was described as the “Nigerian brother,” and boasted he “was able to breach all the modern and sophisticated technologies and checkpoints at the airports around the world,” said IntelCenter, another US monitoring group.
“His act has dealt a huge blow to the myth of American and global intelligence services and showed how fragile its structure is,” the statement said.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
RSS