Yemen on Thursday provided the most comprehensive account yet of contacts between al-Qaeda and the Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a US airliner, saying he may have met with a radical US-born cleric who previously had contact with the alleged Fort Hood shooter.
In the weeks before the attempted airliner attack, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab met with al-Qaeda operatives in a remote mountainous region that was later hit in an airstrike that targeted a gathering of the group’s top leaders, Yemen’s deputy prime minister said.
The account by Rashad al-Alimi, who oversees security issues in the government, filled in some of the blanks in Abdulmutallab’s movements before his failed attempt to detonate explosives on a Christmas Day flight to Detroit, Michigan.
Al-Alimi also raised new questions. He contended that Abdulmutallab was recruited by al-Qaeda in Britain and that the 23-year-old received the explosives in Nigeria.
US officials say Abdulmutallab told FBI investigators that al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen gave him the material and trained him in how to use it.
Abdulmutallab visited Yemen in August, ostensibly to study Arabic at a Sana’a language institute where he previously studied from 2004 to 2005, but he disappeared in September and his whereabouts were unknown until he left the country on Dec. 4.
Al-Alimi said that at some point during that period, the Nigerian met with al-Qaeda in a sparsely populated area of Shabwa Province amid high mountains.
Among those he may have met with was the US-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who has also been linked to the gunman who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in November.
“There is no doubt that he met and had contacts with al-Qaeda elements in Shabwa ... perhaps with al-Awlaki,” al-Alimi told reporters.
The Awlak tribe, to which the cleric belongs, dominates much of the area.
The 38-year-old cleric, born in New Mexico to Yemeni parents, is a popular figure among al-Qaeda sympathizers, known for his English-language Internet sermons that preach jihad against the West. A decade ago, while preaching at US mosques, he associated with two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers.
Al-Awlaki also exchanged dozens of e-mails with US Major Nidal Malik Hasan in the months before Hasan allegedly carried out the Nov. 5 mass shooting at the Fort Hood, Texas, Army post.
Later, al-Awlaki praised the attack on his Web site, which has since been shut down.
Abdulmutallab first visited Yemen in 2004 and stayed for a year to study Arabic at the Sana‘a school. He then moved to Britain, where he lived until 2008.
Al-Alimi insisted that Yemen’s investigations have shown that during Abdulmutallab’s first stint in Yemen, “he did not have any tendency or behavior indicating extremist ideas.”
“During the period he was living in Britain, I believe he was recruited by radical groups in Britain,” he said.
Officials in Britain have said he met with extremists there, but he was not seen as a threat.
Meanwhile, Canadian Matthew Salmon, who shared a home in Yemen with Abdulmutallab for several weeks in September and October, described the would-be bomber as polite and engaging, but somewhat introverted.
“During those couple of weeks, I would say he was a polite enough fellow to talk to. When we talked, he was engaged in the conversation,” Salmon told Canadian Broadcasting Corp from Yemen.
Abdulmutallab had seemed to be somewhat “introverted” and a “recluse,” spending a lot of time alone in his room, but he was never “hostile” to anyone before he abruptly left their student residence in early October, Salmon said.
“We had a lot of conversations about [religion], and in every one of the conversations, it usually focused around the peace, the brotherhood and the love that can come through Islam,” he said. “We never talked about politics and definitely never talked about anything that would have struck me as being more extreme or fundamental.”
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