Talk Islam

Latest Updates: Christmas day suicide attack RSS

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  johnpi 1:45 pm on February 5, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Abdulmutallab (19), al qaeda (93), Al Qaeda recruiting (16), anwar al-awlaki (25), Christmas day suicide attack, Flight 253 (10), Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab (2)

  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.
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  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.

   

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  johnpi 8:51 am on January 5, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: abdullah al Faisal (9), abdullah faisal (7), Abdulmutallab (19), Christmas day suicide attack, Extremism (167), Flight 253 (10), internet radicals (5), Moussaoui, radical imams (7), radical preachers (6), radicalisation (13), radicalization (12), Richard Reid, Terrorism (399)

  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.

   
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  johnpi 5:00 pm on December 30, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: al qaeda (93), Christmas day suicide attack, Flight 253 (10), Obama (249), US military (60), yemen (45)

  US military readying to launch a retaliatory strike for Christmas Day suicide attack on passenger jet, if Obama orders one.

  The US also now has an agreement with the Yemeni government that it can fly cruise missiles, fighter jets and unmanned drones anywhere over the country with the consent of the government.

  Some details remain to be worked out:

  One of the officials said Yemen has not yet consented to the type of special forces helicopter-borne air assault that would put U.S. commandos on the ground with the mission of capturing suspects for further interrogation.

   
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  johnpi 11:22 pm on December 29, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Christmas day suicide attack, Flight 253 (10), former Guantanamo inmates (10), guantanamo (73), guantanamo bay (33), yemen (45)

  Likely casualty of air plot: Obama’s Guantanamo plans.

  The foiled Christmas Day plot to blow up a jetliner over Detroit has thrown up a major roadblock to President Barack Obama’s pledge to close the prison camps at Guantanamo.

  Cascading reports that the alleged would-be bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had trained in Yemen, and that the plot was hatched by two former Guantanamo detainees, have even supporters of emptying the prison predicting a new impediment to their effort.

  Nearly half of the 198 captives at Guantánamo are citizens of Yemen — also the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden — just south of Saudi Arabia.

   
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  johnpi 5:49 pm on December 28, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Abdulmutallab (19), al qaeda (93), Christmas day suicide attack, fear (5), Flight 253 (10), suicide attacks (15), suicide bombers (14), suicide bombings (17)

  ‘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.
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  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.

   
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  johnpi 9:26 am on December 27, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Abdulmutallab (19), Al Qaeda recruiting (16), Christmas day suicide attack, Extremism (167), Flight 253 (10), internet (46), Internet predators (6), radicalisation (13), radicalization (12)

  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.’

   
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  johnpi 10:12 pm on December 26, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Abdulmutallab (19), al qaeda (93), Christmas day suicide attack, Flight 253 (10)

  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.

   
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  johnpi 8:05 pm on December 26, 2009 | 5 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Abdulmutallab (19), Christmas day suicide attack, Flight 253 (10), 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.

   
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  johnpi 3:06 pm on December 26, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Abdulmutallab (19), al qaeda (93), Al Qaeda recruiting (16), anwar al-awlaki (25), Christmas day suicide attack

  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.