.Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab: one boy’s journey to jihad
On the rubble-strewn outskirts of Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, is a religious university, al-Eman, notorious among US intelligence officials for its suspected links to terrorism.
Last September, sitting quietly among the ranks of young men was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the man now accused of trying to kill almost 300 people by blowing up a transatlantic passenger jet.
According to his visa documents, the 23-year-old Nigerian should have been studying Arabic at an institute a few miles away. But the University College London graduate was already a fluent Arabic speaker and was interested in a far bigger agenda.
“He told me his greatest wish was for sharia and Islam to be the rule of law across the world,” said Achmed Hassan, a classmate at the language institute. Abdulmutallab was routinely skipping his Arabic lessons for lectures at the al-Eman University.
American authorities say the university’s founder, Abdul Majeed al-Zindani, is a “global terrorist” who acts as a recruiting sergeant for Al-Qaeda training camps. He denies the claim. An alumnus of the university murdered three American missionaries in Yemen in 2002.
Abdulmutallab was particularly interested in one of the university’s firebrand speakers, the American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, whose lectures, it has now emerged, Abdulmutallab attended during a visit to Sana’a in 2005.
Awlaki is part of a new generation of internet-savvy preachers and has been linked to several terrorists, including some of the 9/11 hijackers, and the US army major charged with shooting dead 13 people at the Fort Hood military base in Texas. Awlaki described the gunman as a “hero”.
Six weeks after he arrived in Yemen last year, Abdulmutallab left his Arabic classes. It was later said he had travelled to Hadramawt, a poor eastern province that is an Al-Qaeda stronghold.
On Christmas Eve, this previously pious student re-emerged with murderous intent, boarding Northwest Airlines flight 253 bound for Detroit. About 80 grams of a highly explosive chemical, PETN, was carefully sewn into his underpants. It was only a technical glitch, as Al-Qaeda leaders in Yemen later put it, that stopped the bomb going off 20 minutes from landing.
Relief that a fresh atrocity on American soil was narrowly averted on Christmas Day was rapidly overtaken by questions about intelligence failures. There were a number of significant warnings about Abdulmutallab’s intentions. Last night it emerged that during his time in London, Abdulmutallab had come onto MI5’s radar because of his “multiple communications” with extremists in the UK, including several radical figures at mosques.
One Whitehall official said: “This was a young man who while he was in the UK was starting his journey and was exploring an interest in radical Islam. He was making contact and reaching out to people who were MI5’s targets of interest.”
MI5 concluded that Abdulmutallab did not pose a threat to national security.
Officials believe he decided to become a suicide bomber only after leaving UCL last year and travelling to Yemen. They also think that up to a dozen young British Muslims are receiving terrorist training in that country.
Last week President Barack Obama was forced to interrupt his Christmas break in Hawaii to condemn US intelligence agencies for failing to spot Abdulmutallab before he boarded flight 253.
Warnings included an alert from Abdulmutallab’s father and intercepts of conversations by America’s National Security Agency that indicated the role of a Nigerian in a terrorist plot. “When our government has information on a known extremist, and that information is not shared and acted upon as it should have been, a systemic failure has occurred and I consider that totally unacceptable,” Obama said.
Billions of dollars have been spent in the US to tap into Al-Qaeda’s networks and to improve the flow of information between the surveillance and intelligence agency. In the UK, tens of million of pounds have been poured into projects to combat violent extremism. In Abdulmutallab’s case, it all seemed to count for nothing.
Why was he not stopped? And with American and British forces still enmeshed in Al-Qaeda’s former stronghold in Afghanistan, what can be done about the risks of similar terrorist recruits being groomed and trained in Yemen?
Speaking to The Sunday Times in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, last Thursday, Abdulmutallab’s father, Umaru Mutallab, seemed composed, but in a state of disbelief over what had happened. He said he wanted to fly to America to see his son.
“As you can imagine, having a son involved in something like that is terrible,” he said. “It is awful. The family are now taking some time to reflect on what happened.”
The family are baffled. Last week they were doing research on the internet as to how a “perfect child” with a privileged and stable upbringing could have so easily been recruited and inculcated.
Umaru Mutallab, 71, belongs to Nigeria’s wealthy elite, serving as a government minister in the 1970s before embarking on a successful financial career. He retired last month after a decade as chairman of First Bank, one of the country’s most respected financial institutions.
The family own properties around the world, including at least three in Nigeria — one with its own silver-domed mosque in their home town of Funtua in the Muslim-dominated north of the country; a property in Kaduna, a trade and administrative centre; and a palatial home in Abuja.
“Umar was one of the most humble boys in the street who was always close to the mosque,” said Shehu Sani, a neighbour in Kaduna. “He was the first person to be in the mosque, and the last to leave. You always saw him praying or reciting the holy Koran.”
A close family friend said: “People used to tell his mother he was a gift from God because he was so well-behaved. Farouk didn’t like his family’s wealth and didn’t approve of spending lots of money on bags or shoes. He only had two pairs of shoes and if his mother bought him more, he would give them away.”
Abdulmutallab was educated in Kaduna and the British School of Lome, an exclusive boarding school in Togo. He was already devoted to religion, to the extent that fellow pupils referred to him as “Pope”.
But along with a quiet humility was a growing intolerance of behaviour that did not fit in with his strict views of the world. On a school trip to London in 2001, he became upset when students were taken to a pub for lunch by their teacher. He felt it was wrong to be in any place serving alcohol.
One close friend, who asked not to be identified, said Abdulmutallab had defended the 9/11 attacks. “I think in that period he was on a knife edge,” he said. “I knew he was extreme and he had the potential to go further in that direction.”
The young Nigerian joined an Islamic internet forum in his last year at boarding school, revealing a more vulnerable side to his character. “I have no one to speak to, no one to consult, no one to support me and I feel depressed and lonely. I do not know what to do,” he wrote in February 2005.
In the summer of that year, Abdulmutallab — who had also confessed to “jihad fantasies” on the forum — travelled to Yemen for a three-month language course, where he first encountered the cleric Awlaki in lectures at the al-Eman University. In the autumn, he started his UCL course in mechanical engineering with business finance.
Abdulmutallab was, however, quietly ruminating on the injustices he saw being perpetrated against fellow Muslims. In one internet posting, he compared the inhumane conditions at Guantanamo Bay with the more humane treatment that a woman journalist captured by the Taliban had received.
Abdulmutallab was a regular worshipper at a mosque in Goodge Street, central London, which is run by the Muslim World League, a Saudi-based organisation. Police were at the mosque on Friday interviewing worshippers.
Ahmad Makhdoom, the London director of the league, said: “Everyone has said he was very nice and quiet. He used to come here and worship and go.” The league promulgates a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, but has repeatedly condemned terrorism.
Abdulmutallab was also increasingly active in the university’s Islamic Society, becoming its president in 2006. Along with political discussions, activities included martial arts training and paintballing. At least one paintballing trip organised by the society involved a preacher who has reportedly said: “Dying while fighting jihad is one of the surest ways to paradise.”
Abdulmutallab also organised a “war on terror” week in January 2007, which included a contribution from Moazzam Begg, a former inmate of Guantanamo Bay and a director of Cageprisoners, a human rights organisation campaigning for the release of Muslim detainees.
At that time, Cageprisoners was demanding the release of Awlaki, who had been arrested in October 2006 by secret police in Yemen and was being kept in solitary confinement. Awlaki’s recorded lectures in fluent English were an inspiration to Islamist fundamentalists and it has now been established that his sermons provided inspiration to at least six terror cells in the UK.
His recordings were found in an Islamic bookshop in Leeds linked to Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, two of the 7/7 bombers who killed 52 commuters in London in 2005.
Like Abdulmutallab, Awlaki enjoyed a privileged upbringing and chose a radical religious path. He was born in New Mexico in 1971 when his father, a former Yemeni minister, was studying for a college degree.
As an imam in Denver, San Diego and Falls Church, Virginia, he came into contact with three of the 9/11 hijackers. He also spent several months in Britain in 2003, giving lectures to up to 200 impressionable youths, before moving to Yemen.
“He wasn’t here for very long but he revived jihad among the youth,” said Abu Muaz, head of the Salafi Youth Movement. “Some of the guys who were there ... have gone abroad to partake in the struggles.” The cleric repeatedly emerged as an influence in terror plots in America and Britain and is now banned from both countries. Until recently, the prevailing view among intelligence officials was that he was inspirational rather than operational.
The Fort Hood killings last November, however, prompted a reappraisal after investigators confirmed electronic traffic between Major Nidal Hasan and the cleric, who was released from prison in December 2007. Awlaki’s family have denied he has any involvement in Al-Qaeda, but he is now on a US hitlist. It was initially thought he had been killed in an airstrike last month, but it now appears he survived. Intelligence officials last week said they were concerned that Awlaki was enlisting recruits to Al-Qaeda via the internet. Abdulmutallab is now suspected to have been a prize catch.
In early 2009, Abdulmutallab’s family, who were now deeply concerned about his growing fundamentalism, were celebrating a minor coup. Having graduated from UCL, he had agreed to pursue a masters degree in cosmopolitan Dubai, rather than his preferred choices of Saudi Arabia or Egypt.
It was, however, a short-lived victory. In the summer, he told his family that he wanted to go to Yemen to attend a language school and he arrived in the country in late August.
That same month the National Security Agency intercepted Al-Qaeda transmissions in Yemen relating to an unidentified Nigerian being involved in a possible plot. It was the first small piece in a puzzle that could have prevented Abdulmutallab from boarding the Detroit-bound plane.
In October, Abdulmutallab sent his father a text message saying that he was no longer interested in doing his MBA in Dubai and wanted to do a seven-year course in Yemen, studying sharia and Arabic. When his father threatened to cut off his funding, Abdulmutallab said he was “already getting everything for free”. A month later he sent another text message: “Please forgive me. I will no longer be in touch with you.”
His family considered travelling to Yemen to “rescue” the wayward son, but the plan was considered impractical. Instead, on November 19, Abdulmutallab’s distressed father met two CIA officers at the US embassy in Abuja and told them that his son might have developed extremist ties in Yemen. According to one relative, the father told them: “Look at the texts he’s sending. He’s a security threat.”
The Americans had reason to be alarmed because Abdulmutallab had been granted a multiple-entry visa to the US in June 2008. By contrast, Britain had refused him a visa in May 2009 after he tried to enter the country claiming he wanted to study at a college that turned out to be bogus.
The day after Mutallab’s meeting with the CIA, the US embassy dispatched a warning to the National Counterterrorism Center in America. Abdulmutallab’s name was added to a 550,000-strong list of suspects who warranted further research. Crucially, he was not put on the no-fly list and his visa was not revoked.
Other information was now flowing into the centre, warning of a possible terrorist attack over Christmas. However, officials failed to link it to the warning from Abdulmutallab’s father or the earlier National Security Agency intercepts.
Time was now running out. On December 16, Abdulmutallab travelled to Accra in Ghana where he bought a return ticket for $2,831 in cash from Lagos to Detroit, via Amsterdam. He flew to Lagos on the evening of December 24, spending just 28 minutes in the country before boarding his flight to Amsterdam at 8.35pm. He was carrying only hand luggage.
Even at this late stage, American authorities could have stopped him. Details on every passenger on a US-bound flight, including suspicious ticket purchases and baggage details, are forwarded to the Department of Homeland Security before take-off.
It is not known whether Abdulmutallab chose his seat, 19A, but it was near a fuel tank that would still contain reserves at the end of the flight. David Learmount, an aviation expert, said it was “pretty much the best possible seat in the plane to have the highest chance of bringing it down”.
The explosion would have been similar to a hand grenade and would have probably punctured a hole through the fuselage, rupturing the fuel tank.
IN America last week, it was the worst kind of deja vu. Eight years after 9/11 and after $40 billion has been lavished on intelligence reform, how could the same mistakes happen again?
“It’s extremely frustrating and disappointing,” said Amy Zegart, a professor at the school of public affairs at University of California, Los Angeles. “It could only have been more obvious if the guy had worn a T-shirt saying ‘I’m a terrorist’.”
Obama, who is holding a meeting of his intelligence chiefs on Tuesday, may also shoulder some of the blame. Critics say he has been too fixated with Afghanistan, taking 93 days to decide whether to send more troops, and there has been a lack of focus on other possible threats.
Apart from the post-mortem on the intelligence failures, Obama will be expected to take bold action over the rising threat from Al-Qaeda camps in Yemen. Gordon Brown has announced he is to host an emergency world summit in London this month on combating extremism in Yemen.
Other experts, however, say Abdulmutallab’s case must mean a new drive to combat extremism on British university campuses. Anthony Glees, director of intelligence and security studies at Buckingham University, said: “Radical extreme views are so much part of the diet of Islamic student life that people can no longer tell the difference between legitimate dissent and hate propaganda designed to brainwash. Radicalisation is about softening them up and brainwashing to an extent that makes them ripe for being turned into bombers by Al- Qaeda. London has become the perfect place for Al-Qaeda recruiters to talent-spot.”
Last October, Awlaki wrote on his blog that Yemen was about to become a global player in jihad and might become the “single most important front” in the world. Intelligence officials will be keen to show they can combat this threat because next time luck and passenger heroism is unlikely to be enough.
Timesonline
Last September, sitting quietly among the ranks of young men was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the man now accused of trying to kill almost 300 people by blowing up a transatlantic passenger jet.
According to his visa documents, the 23-year-old Nigerian should have been studying Arabic at an institute a few miles away. But the University College London graduate was already a fluent Arabic speaker and was interested in a far bigger agenda.
“He told me his greatest wish was for sharia and Islam to be the rule of law across the world,” said Achmed Hassan, a classmate at the language institute. Abdulmutallab was routinely skipping his Arabic lessons for lectures at the al-Eman University.
American authorities say the university’s founder, Abdul Majeed al-Zindani, is a “global terrorist” who acts as a recruiting sergeant for Al-Qaeda training camps. He denies the claim. An alumnus of the university murdered three American missionaries in Yemen in 2002.
Abdulmutallab was particularly interested in one of the university’s firebrand speakers, the American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, whose lectures, it has now emerged, Abdulmutallab attended during a visit to Sana’a in 2005.
Awlaki is part of a new generation of internet-savvy preachers and has been linked to several terrorists, including some of the 9/11 hijackers, and the US army major charged with shooting dead 13 people at the Fort Hood military base in Texas. Awlaki described the gunman as a “hero”.
Six weeks after he arrived in Yemen last year, Abdulmutallab left his Arabic classes. It was later said he had travelled to Hadramawt, a poor eastern province that is an Al-Qaeda stronghold.
On Christmas Eve, this previously pious student re-emerged with murderous intent, boarding Northwest Airlines flight 253 bound for Detroit. About 80 grams of a highly explosive chemical, PETN, was carefully sewn into his underpants. It was only a technical glitch, as Al-Qaeda leaders in Yemen later put it, that stopped the bomb going off 20 minutes from landing.
Relief that a fresh atrocity on American soil was narrowly averted on Christmas Day was rapidly overtaken by questions about intelligence failures. There were a number of significant warnings about Abdulmutallab’s intentions. Last night it emerged that during his time in London, Abdulmutallab had come onto MI5’s radar because of his “multiple communications” with extremists in the UK, including several radical figures at mosques.
One Whitehall official said: “This was a young man who while he was in the UK was starting his journey and was exploring an interest in radical Islam. He was making contact and reaching out to people who were MI5’s targets of interest.”
MI5 concluded that Abdulmutallab did not pose a threat to national security.
Officials believe he decided to become a suicide bomber only after leaving UCL last year and travelling to Yemen. They also think that up to a dozen young British Muslims are receiving terrorist training in that country.
Last week President Barack Obama was forced to interrupt his Christmas break in Hawaii to condemn US intelligence agencies for failing to spot Abdulmutallab before he boarded flight 253.
Warnings included an alert from Abdulmutallab’s father and intercepts of conversations by America’s National Security Agency that indicated the role of a Nigerian in a terrorist plot. “When our government has information on a known extremist, and that information is not shared and acted upon as it should have been, a systemic failure has occurred and I consider that totally unacceptable,” Obama said.
Billions of dollars have been spent in the US to tap into Al-Qaeda’s networks and to improve the flow of information between the surveillance and intelligence agency. In the UK, tens of million of pounds have been poured into projects to combat violent extremism. In Abdulmutallab’s case, it all seemed to count for nothing.
Why was he not stopped? And with American and British forces still enmeshed in Al-Qaeda’s former stronghold in Afghanistan, what can be done about the risks of similar terrorist recruits being groomed and trained in Yemen?
Speaking to The Sunday Times in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, last Thursday, Abdulmutallab’s father, Umaru Mutallab, seemed composed, but in a state of disbelief over what had happened. He said he wanted to fly to America to see his son.
“As you can imagine, having a son involved in something like that is terrible,” he said. “It is awful. The family are now taking some time to reflect on what happened.”
The family are baffled. Last week they were doing research on the internet as to how a “perfect child” with a privileged and stable upbringing could have so easily been recruited and inculcated.
Umaru Mutallab, 71, belongs to Nigeria’s wealthy elite, serving as a government minister in the 1970s before embarking on a successful financial career. He retired last month after a decade as chairman of First Bank, one of the country’s most respected financial institutions.
The family own properties around the world, including at least three in Nigeria — one with its own silver-domed mosque in their home town of Funtua in the Muslim-dominated north of the country; a property in Kaduna, a trade and administrative centre; and a palatial home in Abuja.
“Umar was one of the most humble boys in the street who was always close to the mosque,” said Shehu Sani, a neighbour in Kaduna. “He was the first person to be in the mosque, and the last to leave. You always saw him praying or reciting the holy Koran.”
A close family friend said: “People used to tell his mother he was a gift from God because he was so well-behaved. Farouk didn’t like his family’s wealth and didn’t approve of spending lots of money on bags or shoes. He only had two pairs of shoes and if his mother bought him more, he would give them away.”
Abdulmutallab was educated in Kaduna and the British School of Lome, an exclusive boarding school in Togo. He was already devoted to religion, to the extent that fellow pupils referred to him as “Pope”.
But along with a quiet humility was a growing intolerance of behaviour that did not fit in with his strict views of the world. On a school trip to London in 2001, he became upset when students were taken to a pub for lunch by their teacher. He felt it was wrong to be in any place serving alcohol.
One close friend, who asked not to be identified, said Abdulmutallab had defended the 9/11 attacks. “I think in that period he was on a knife edge,” he said. “I knew he was extreme and he had the potential to go further in that direction.”
The young Nigerian joined an Islamic internet forum in his last year at boarding school, revealing a more vulnerable side to his character. “I have no one to speak to, no one to consult, no one to support me and I feel depressed and lonely. I do not know what to do,” he wrote in February 2005.
In the summer of that year, Abdulmutallab — who had also confessed to “jihad fantasies” on the forum — travelled to Yemen for a three-month language course, where he first encountered the cleric Awlaki in lectures at the al-Eman University. In the autumn, he started his UCL course in mechanical engineering with business finance.
Abdulmutallab was, however, quietly ruminating on the injustices he saw being perpetrated against fellow Muslims. In one internet posting, he compared the inhumane conditions at Guantanamo Bay with the more humane treatment that a woman journalist captured by the Taliban had received.
Abdulmutallab was a regular worshipper at a mosque in Goodge Street, central London, which is run by the Muslim World League, a Saudi-based organisation. Police were at the mosque on Friday interviewing worshippers.
Ahmad Makhdoom, the London director of the league, said: “Everyone has said he was very nice and quiet. He used to come here and worship and go.” The league promulgates a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, but has repeatedly condemned terrorism.
Abdulmutallab was also increasingly active in the university’s Islamic Society, becoming its president in 2006. Along with political discussions, activities included martial arts training and paintballing. At least one paintballing trip organised by the society involved a preacher who has reportedly said: “Dying while fighting jihad is one of the surest ways to paradise.”
Abdulmutallab also organised a “war on terror” week in January 2007, which included a contribution from Moazzam Begg, a former inmate of Guantanamo Bay and a director of Cageprisoners, a human rights organisation campaigning for the release of Muslim detainees.
At that time, Cageprisoners was demanding the release of Awlaki, who had been arrested in October 2006 by secret police in Yemen and was being kept in solitary confinement. Awlaki’s recorded lectures in fluent English were an inspiration to Islamist fundamentalists and it has now been established that his sermons provided inspiration to at least six terror cells in the UK.
His recordings were found in an Islamic bookshop in Leeds linked to Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, two of the 7/7 bombers who killed 52 commuters in London in 2005.
Like Abdulmutallab, Awlaki enjoyed a privileged upbringing and chose a radical religious path. He was born in New Mexico in 1971 when his father, a former Yemeni minister, was studying for a college degree.
As an imam in Denver, San Diego and Falls Church, Virginia, he came into contact with three of the 9/11 hijackers. He also spent several months in Britain in 2003, giving lectures to up to 200 impressionable youths, before moving to Yemen.
“He wasn’t here for very long but he revived jihad among the youth,” said Abu Muaz, head of the Salafi Youth Movement. “Some of the guys who were there ... have gone abroad to partake in the struggles.” The cleric repeatedly emerged as an influence in terror plots in America and Britain and is now banned from both countries. Until recently, the prevailing view among intelligence officials was that he was inspirational rather than operational.
The Fort Hood killings last November, however, prompted a reappraisal after investigators confirmed electronic traffic between Major Nidal Hasan and the cleric, who was released from prison in December 2007. Awlaki’s family have denied he has any involvement in Al-Qaeda, but he is now on a US hitlist. It was initially thought he had been killed in an airstrike last month, but it now appears he survived. Intelligence officials last week said they were concerned that Awlaki was enlisting recruits to Al-Qaeda via the internet. Abdulmutallab is now suspected to have been a prize catch.
In early 2009, Abdulmutallab’s family, who were now deeply concerned about his growing fundamentalism, were celebrating a minor coup. Having graduated from UCL, he had agreed to pursue a masters degree in cosmopolitan Dubai, rather than his preferred choices of Saudi Arabia or Egypt.
It was, however, a short-lived victory. In the summer, he told his family that he wanted to go to Yemen to attend a language school and he arrived in the country in late August.
That same month the National Security Agency intercepted Al-Qaeda transmissions in Yemen relating to an unidentified Nigerian being involved in a possible plot. It was the first small piece in a puzzle that could have prevented Abdulmutallab from boarding the Detroit-bound plane.
In October, Abdulmutallab sent his father a text message saying that he was no longer interested in doing his MBA in Dubai and wanted to do a seven-year course in Yemen, studying sharia and Arabic. When his father threatened to cut off his funding, Abdulmutallab said he was “already getting everything for free”. A month later he sent another text message: “Please forgive me. I will no longer be in touch with you.”
His family considered travelling to Yemen to “rescue” the wayward son, but the plan was considered impractical. Instead, on November 19, Abdulmutallab’s distressed father met two CIA officers at the US embassy in Abuja and told them that his son might have developed extremist ties in Yemen. According to one relative, the father told them: “Look at the texts he’s sending. He’s a security threat.”
The Americans had reason to be alarmed because Abdulmutallab had been granted a multiple-entry visa to the US in June 2008. By contrast, Britain had refused him a visa in May 2009 after he tried to enter the country claiming he wanted to study at a college that turned out to be bogus.
The day after Mutallab’s meeting with the CIA, the US embassy dispatched a warning to the National Counterterrorism Center in America. Abdulmutallab’s name was added to a 550,000-strong list of suspects who warranted further research. Crucially, he was not put on the no-fly list and his visa was not revoked.
Other information was now flowing into the centre, warning of a possible terrorist attack over Christmas. However, officials failed to link it to the warning from Abdulmutallab’s father or the earlier National Security Agency intercepts.
Time was now running out. On December 16, Abdulmutallab travelled to Accra in Ghana where he bought a return ticket for $2,831 in cash from Lagos to Detroit, via Amsterdam. He flew to Lagos on the evening of December 24, spending just 28 minutes in the country before boarding his flight to Amsterdam at 8.35pm. He was carrying only hand luggage.
Even at this late stage, American authorities could have stopped him. Details on every passenger on a US-bound flight, including suspicious ticket purchases and baggage details, are forwarded to the Department of Homeland Security before take-off.
It is not known whether Abdulmutallab chose his seat, 19A, but it was near a fuel tank that would still contain reserves at the end of the flight. David Learmount, an aviation expert, said it was “pretty much the best possible seat in the plane to have the highest chance of bringing it down”.
The explosion would have been similar to a hand grenade and would have probably punctured a hole through the fuselage, rupturing the fuel tank.
IN America last week, it was the worst kind of deja vu. Eight years after 9/11 and after $40 billion has been lavished on intelligence reform, how could the same mistakes happen again?
“It’s extremely frustrating and disappointing,” said Amy Zegart, a professor at the school of public affairs at University of California, Los Angeles. “It could only have been more obvious if the guy had worn a T-shirt saying ‘I’m a terrorist’.”
Obama, who is holding a meeting of his intelligence chiefs on Tuesday, may also shoulder some of the blame. Critics say he has been too fixated with Afghanistan, taking 93 days to decide whether to send more troops, and there has been a lack of focus on other possible threats.
Apart from the post-mortem on the intelligence failures, Obama will be expected to take bold action over the rising threat from Al-Qaeda camps in Yemen. Gordon Brown has announced he is to host an emergency world summit in London this month on combating extremism in Yemen.
Other experts, however, say Abdulmutallab’s case must mean a new drive to combat extremism on British university campuses. Anthony Glees, director of intelligence and security studies at Buckingham University, said: “Radical extreme views are so much part of the diet of Islamic student life that people can no longer tell the difference between legitimate dissent and hate propaganda designed to brainwash. Radicalisation is about softening them up and brainwashing to an extent that makes them ripe for being turned into bombers by Al- Qaeda. London has become the perfect place for Al-Qaeda recruiters to talent-spot.”
Last October, Awlaki wrote on his blog that Yemen was about to become a global player in jihad and might become the “single most important front” in the world. Intelligence officials will be keen to show they can combat this threat because next time luck and passenger heroism is unlikely to be enough.
Timesonline
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