Latest Updates: Abdulmutallab RSS

  • johnpi 1:45 pm on February 5, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Abdulmutallab, , , , , ,

    CBS News is reporting that Abdulmutallab has said that Anwar al-Awlaki directed him to carry out the attempted suicide bombing against a US airliner.

    The suspect in a failed Christmas Day airliner bombing attempt told federal investigators that radical Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki directed him to carry out the attack, CBS News has learned.
    ….

    The source said Abdulmutallab told investigators he was guided by al-Awalki to detonate the bomb over U.S. soil, unlike the failed British bomber plot in 2006 when the bombers were instructed to detonate bombs on airliners over the ocean on the way to the U.S. so that there would be no evidence left behind.

    There’s also a discussion of the legality of the US government targeting al Awlaki:

    CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Lara Logan reports that al-Awlaki’s U.S. citizenship – he was born in New Mexico – will have little bearing on American military and intelligence efforts to locate and kill him.

    U.S. officials, both current and former, tell Logan that if an individual is deemed to be part of a terrorist network that is a threat to American security in any way, they can be targeted legitimately.

    Al Awlaki denied in another report giving Abdulmutallab permission or issuing a fatwa approving the attack.

     

  • johnpi 9:03 pm on January 29, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Abdulmutallab, , , ,

    Malaysian government arrests eight foreigners and two locals to – among other things – ‘control Wahhabism amid concerns it could feed violence among extremist Muslims in Malaysia.’

    Malaysia’s arrest of 10 terror suspects was part of a sweep targeting the hard-line Islamic sect often associated with al-Qaida, but any link to the Nigerian suspected in the attempted bombing of a U.S. airliner remains unclear, a senior official said Friday.

    Malaysia’s home minister announced the arrests Wednesday under the Internal Security Act, which allows indefinite detention without trial, saying they were mainly foreigners linked to an international terrorist network and posed a security threat. He declined to give further details.

    Activists said they included four men from Syria, two from Nigeria and one each from Yemen and Jordan.
    ….

    The senior Malaysian official, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the suspects were believed to be followers of the orthodox Wahhabi sect, which seeks to purify Islamic beliefs and supports the establishment of Muslim states based on Islamic laws. Osama bin Laden and other members of al-Qaida are believed to have been influenced by Wahhabi doctrines.
    ….

    The newspaper said Friday that police were investigating the possibility that some of the suspects were in Yemen at the same time as Abdulmutallab when he was allegedly undergoing training. It didn’t say how it obtained the information.

    However, the Malaysian official said there were no confirmed links at this stage between the suspects and Abdulmutallab. He said the arrests were aimed at controlling Wahhabism amid concerns it could feed violence among extremist Muslims in Malaysia.

     

  • abunoor 8:20 pm on January 14, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Abdulmutallab, , , , , , prisoners rights, , ,

    Moazzam Begg on AbdulMuttalab, al-Awlaki, and allegations against CagePrisoners.

     

  • johnpi 9:54 am on January 7, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    Yemen says Abdulmutallab may have met Anwar al-Awlaki, but avers that he was initially recruited into Al Qaeda in Britain.

    The Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a U.S. passenger plane on Christmas met in a remote mountainous area of Yemen with regional al-Qaida leaders, possibly including a radical American cleric who was also in contact with the alleged Fort Hood shooter, Yemen’s deputy prime minister said Thursday.

    However, Rashad al-Alimi insisted that 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was recruited by al-Qaida in Britain, before he arrived in Yemen last summer, and that he obtained the explosives used in the failed attack after he left Yemen.

     

  • johnpi 8:51 am on January 5, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Abdulmutallab, , , , , Moussaoui, , , , , Richard Reid,

    The New York Times is reporting that Abdullah al Faisal may have been a source of radicalization or inspiration to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day suicide attacker.

    Mr. Faisal’s name surfaced much more recently in investigations into Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man accused of the attempted attack on a Northwest Airlines flight.

    In an online posting in May 2005, under the name “farouk1986,” Mr. Abdulmutallab referred to Mr. Faisal as a cleric he had listened to, according to American military and law enforcement authorities.

    In his posting, Mr. Abdulmutallab wrote: “I thought once they are arrested, no one hears about them for life and the keys to their prison wards are thrown away. That’s what I heard Sheik Faisal of U.K. say (he has also been arrested I heard).”

    Al Faisal was also Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui’s imam in the UK at the Brixton mosque. More background on al Faisal here.

     

  • johnpi 4:06 pm on January 4, 2010 | 5 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Abdulmutallab

    A former teacher says Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was more secular than religious on the first of two visits he made to Yemen. When he returned from the UK via the UAE on his second trip “he was more committed to praying and Islam.”

     

  • aziz 12:48 pm on December 31, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Abdulmutallab

    Some more detail about how Abdulmutallab got into Yemen for his Al Qaeda training – by using an Arabic language course as a cover.

    In the story, Mr. Anisi, the founder of the school, also recollects about Abdulmutallab as a student and a person while attending the school.

     

  • johnpi 10:35 am on December 30, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Abdulmutallab, , , , , , , , , , , ,

    Abdulmutallab praised the 9/11 attacks as a teenager.

    The bomber also praised the 9/11 terrorist attacks when he was a teenager, telling one schoolfriend they were “an act of war”. The unnamed friend said: “We were talking about 9/11. I was saying under no circumstances could it ever be OK to kill all those innocent people. He was much more equivocal.

    “He called 9/11 an act of war – American troops were on Saudi soil and had humiliated Muslim countries so these actions might be necessary. That’s the only time I had an argument with him.”

    US troops were invited into Saudi Arabia by the royal family. There is precedent for making military alliances with Western nations. No less an authority than Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (Mr. Wahhabism) and Ibn Saud entered into an offensive alliance with the English to help bring down the Ottoman empire, since it was unconscionable to them as ethnic supremacists that a Turk could be considered equal to an Arab, let alone govern Arabs. “Abd al-Wahhab was, in part reacting to the old ethnocentric belief tht only Arabs can represent the one true and authentic Islam.”

    You can’t condemn one and not the other without being a hypocrite, but hypocrisy was never a problem for Wahhabis:

    While consistently condemning non-Muslim influences and rejecting any form of cooperation with the West, in reality the Wahhabis were incited and supported by English colonialists to rebel against the Ottomans, which effectively meant that Wahhabis sided with non-Muslim Englishmen against their Muslim Ottoman enemies. Moreover, while condemning all forms of nationalism as an evil Western invention, in reality Wahhabism was a pro-Arab nationalistic movement that rejected Turkish dominance over Arabs under the guise of defending the one true Islam.

     

  • johnpi 10:59 pm on December 29, 2009 | 6 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Abdulmutallab, , , , , UK media

    I would appreciate some of our UK readers and contributors stepping up to help us sort bulls*** from substance in what’s being spit out in the UK press right now.

    For example, is The Times considered mainstream media? Left-wing, right-wing? Reliably objective or not? How should I know. I’m in America.

    But anyway, here’s a little something from the Times today about Abdulmutallab’s participation in organizing a ‘War on Terror’ week protest:

    His role in organising War on Terror Week is the first indication that during his years in London he was heavily involved in radical political activity. Experts believe that this would have put him at risk of being groomed by al-Qaeda recruiters who routinely prey on such radical religious and political gatherings. “Before someone goes off for explosives training they have to be converted to the cause of al-Qaeda,” said Professor Anthony Glees, of the University of Buckingham.

    “I think that happened in London in the case of Abdulmutallab, as has happened to many others. He is one of a considerable number of people who have turned to al-Qaeda after being recruited in the UK. This recruitment often goes on where political events take place. Those who speak at such events are not terrorists, but they are being irresponsible if they do not realise that what they say could contribute to the radicalisation of people who could then be recruited into terror.”

    Anthony Glees, you may recall, was the guy who advocated for internment camps in the UK ‘to be on the table as an option’ for dealing with the ‘Muslim problem.’

    Is the fact that a degenerate like Glees is being quoted in the Times ‘normal’ for that paper, or is this an alarming sign that thinkers from way out in the right-wing universe are being ‘mainstreamed’?

     

  • abunoor 2:48 pm on December 29, 2009 | 4 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Abdulmutallab,

    The Washington Times is quoting an unnamed intelligence official for the first time directly alleging a link between al-Awlaki and the attempted plane bombing.

    The Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner had his suicide mission personally blessed in Yemen by Anwar al-Awlaki, the same Muslim imam suspected of radicalizing the Fort Hood shooting suspect, a U.S. intelligence source has told The Washington Times.

    The intelligence official, who is familiar with the FBI’s interrogation of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, said the bombing suspect has boasted of his jihad training during interrogation by the FBI and has said it included final exhortations by Mr. al-Awlaki.

    “It was Awlaki who indoctrinated him,” the official said. “He was told, ‘You are going to be the tip of the spear of the Muslim nation.’”

    In his FBI interrogation, according to the U.S. intelligence official, Mr. Abdulmutallab spoke of being in a room in Yemen receiving Muslim blessings and prayers from Mr. al-Awlaki, along with a number of other men “all covered up in white martyrs’ garments,” and known only by code names and “abu” honorifics.

    The official said such clothing and the lack of familiarity among the men suggests al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula intends to use the men in that room in suicide missions.

    The intelligence official’s description comes in the wake of several reports that Yemen is breeding scores of jihadists ready to strike the West.

    Yemen’s top diplomat said Tuesday that hundreds of al Qaeda militants are in his country and pleaded for foreign help and intelligence in rooting them out.

    They may actually plan attacks like the one we have just had in Detroit. There are maybe hundreds of them — 200, 300, Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi told the Times of London.

     

  • johnpi 7:51 am on December 29, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Abdulmutallab

    More of Abdulmutallab’s chatroom thoughts on loneliness, and the dilemma between Muslim liberalism and Muslim extremism:

    He wrote of his “dilemma between liberalism and extremism” as a Muslim. “The Prophet(s) said religion is easy and anyone who tries to overburden themselves will find it hard and will not be able to continue,” he wrote in 2005. “So anytime I relax, I deviate sometimes and then when I strive hard, I get tired of what I am doing i.e. memorising the quran, etc. How should one put the balance right?”

    On loneliness:

    “I have no one to speak too [sic],” read a posting from January 2005, when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was attending boarding school. “No one to consult, no one to support me and I feel depressed and lonely. I do not know what to do. And then I think this loneliness leads me to other problems.”

     

  • aziz 6:31 am on December 29, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Abdulmutallab,

    I flew back last night from Mumbai and have some personal thoughts on the security response to Flight 253, packs, and herds.

     

  • johnpi 6:09 pm on December 28, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Abdulmutallab, ,

    Abdulmutallab’s high school chatroom “jihad fantasies” revealed.

    CBS News correspondent Richard Roth reports Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s online digital trail leads back to boarding school in West Africa. In 2005, he was chatting under the screen-name “Farouk 1986.”

    Eighteen years old at the time, Abdulmutallab paints an online portrait of alienation. “I have no friend,” he writes. “Far from home, at a school with few Muslims; No one to consult, no one to support me and I feel depressed.”

    He explains that he’s Nigerian – from a wealthy family with a home in London. He even gives his name, Umar Farouk, and on February 20th, 2005, he hints at his dreams.

    “…Basically they are jihad fantasies,” he writes. “I imagine how the great jihad will take place. How the Muslims will win, and rule the whole world,” adding, “do I have to clarify anything further?”
    ….

    On campus, he became president of the Islamic Students Union. Online, January 26th, 2007, he listed seminars for what was called the “War on Terror Week.” Speakers would include Asim Qureshi. In an online video, Qureshi said: “We know it is incumbent upon all of us to support jihad against the oppression of the West.”

    It isn’t known whether Abdulmutallab heard those words, but by his own account he was ready for the message. British authorities say his path to terrorism wasn’t unique.

     

  • johnpi 5:49 pm on December 28, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Abdulmutallab, , , , , , ,

    ‘I’m the first of many’ warns airline bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

    …disclosures came as Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, said he doubted that Mr Abdulmutallab had acted alone, and Dutch military police announced that they were investigating a witness’s description of an accomplice who may have helped the young Nigerian to board the aircraft in Amsterdam.
    ….

    The spectre of a wave of lone suicide bombers attempting to board airliners bound for the US gave fresh urgency to the Dutch investigation of how Mr Abdulmutallab was able to board Northwest Airlines flight 253 despite being on an American watch list and banned from entering Britain.

    Two passengers on the flight, Kurt and Lori Haskell, said yesterday that they had seen the young man walk to the gate desk at Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, with a well-dressed older man whom they claimed to overhear asking that Mr Abdulmutallab be allowed to board without a passport. “The guy said, ‘He’s from Sudan and we do this all the time’,” Mr Haskell, a lawyer, told a Detroit news website. The claim was being taken seriously by Dutch authorities last night.

     

  • johnpi 11:11 pm on December 27, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Abdulmutallab,

    Nigerian in aircraft attack linked to East London Mosque.

    Security agencies in Britain are investigating reports that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the young Nigerian accused of attempting to blow up a transatlantic airliner, contacted radical Muslims while studying at university in London, The Independent understands.

    Mohammed Mutallab, a cousin of the arrested man, has claimed that the 23-year-old came under the influence of extremist groups while in this country, and associates claim he visited the East London Mosque, which has attracted criticism for hosting Muslim hardline preachers, three times.

     

  • johnpi 9:26 am on December 27, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Abdulmutallab, , , , , , , ,

    Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s chat room messages.

    ABC News claims it has tracked down more than 100 posts that Abdulmutallab wrote.

    One very sad post stands out:

    He wrote of being lonely and sought friends on-line. “Can you be my friend?” he wrote. “I get lonely sometimes because I have never found a true Muslim friend.”

    He still hasn’t found a ‘true Muslim friend.’

     

  • johnpi 10:12 pm on December 26, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Abdulmutallab, , ,

    Officials: Only a failed detonator saved Northwest flight.

    Officials now say tragedy was only averted on Northwest flight 253 because a makeshift detonator failed to work properly.

    Bomb experts say there was more than enough explosive to bring down the Northwest jet, which had nearly 300 people aboard, had the detonator not failed, and the nation’s outdated airport screening machines may need to be upgraded.

     

  • johnpi 8:05 pm on December 26, 2009 | 5 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Abdulmutallab, , , mutallab, Mutallib

    Flight 253 suicide bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was radicalized while studying in London, and then joined a ‘Salafi cell’ in the UAE, says CNN.

    …Abdul Mutallib ran into a radical Muslim network while studying in London. He was last registered in class at University College London in June 2008.

    This fall he had wanted to go study in Cairo, but his father was worried about his unsavory friends and afraid he would hook up with Egyptian radicals there. So the family sent him to study in Dubai instead.

    Sometime in late October he sent the family a text message that he was going off to Yemen and that the family would find it difficult to trace him because he was throwing away his phone’s sim card. So it appears that he was recruited into a radical Salafi cell in the United Arab Emirates that sent him to Yemen.

    Abdulmutallab, was the well-off son of a Nigerian banker. Unlike ‘certain activists waxing lyrically from their Western suburban homes‘ to paraphrase Thabet, it appears Abdulmutallab was quite serious about his radicalization.

    * Note: It may take a few days for the press to figure out what it’s going to call the attack and how it’s going to spell ‘Mutallib’s’ name, the other variant of which is ‘Abdulmutallab.’ Spellings are important for Google searches.

     

  • johnpi 3:06 pm on December 26, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Abdulmutallab, , , ,

    Anwar al Awlaki’s name being thrown about in relation to yesterday’s attempt to bomb a passenger jet.

    ABC is also now reporting that the attacker wasn’t a ‘lone wolf’ and that the attack was definitely planned by Al Qaeda leaders in Yemen.

    According to the authorities, Abdulmutallab says he made contact via the internet with a radical imam in Yemen who then connected him with al Qaeda leaders in a village north of the country’s capital, Sanaa.

    Authorities say they do not yet know if the imam was the same one who was in contact with Maj. Nidal Hasan prior to his alleged attack on soldiers at Fort Hood last month. American-born Anwar Awlaki has lived in Yemen since 2002 and is considered a major recruiter for al Qaeda by U.S. authorities. He survived a U.S.-backed air strike earlier this week.

    Also, as with the case of the five Americans recently arrested in Pakistan, Abdulmutallab came to the attention of US authorities six months ago when worried family members contacted the US embasssy and reported that he might have become radicalized.

     

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