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Rediff.com  » News » More bombers on their way: Nigerian bomber to FBI

More bombers on their way: Nigerian bomber to FBI

Source: ANI
Last updated on: December 29, 2009 12:57 IST
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More bombers are on their way to target America, the Nigerian Al Qaeda suspect charged for trying to blow up a US airliner has told the Federal Bureau of Investigation, setting alarm bells among intelligence and security apparatus in Washington.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab told the FBI that "there were more just like him in Yemen and would strike soon", the ABC News reported quoting officials familiar with the investigation.

A tape released by Al Qaeda leaders in Yemen some four days before the failed attempt to blow up the US plane, had said that "we are carrying bomb to hit the enemies of God".

Abdulmutallab, 23, has been charged with attempting to blow up the US plane and planting an explosive device on it.

He was arrested soon after his failed bid to ignite explosives inside the Amsterdam-Detroit Northwest Airlines flight 253 on Christmas Day with nearly 300 people on board.

The explosive was identified as PETN -- pentaerythritol tetranitrate -- which was concealed in his underwear.

According to news reports, Abdulmutallab has told the FBI that he was trained for more than a month in Yemen, given 80 grams of a high explosive cleverly sewn into his underpants, that went undetected by standard security screening.

"They know that this is a weakness and an Achilles' heel in our airport security system," said ABC News consultant and former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke.

Federal authorities met on Tuesday to reassess the system of terror watchlists to determine how to avoid the lapse that allowed a man with explosives to board flight even though he was flagged as a possible terrorist, CBS News said.

Meanwhile, the online digital trail of the Nigerian indicated his jihadi fantasies, a media report said.

"... Basically they are jihad fantasies," Abdulmutallab wrote on an online chat session on February 20, 2005, according to transcripts of the chat obtained by the CBS News.

Eighteen years old at the time, Abdulmutallab paints an online portrait of alienation, the news channel said.

"I have no friend. Far from home, at a school with few Muslims, no one to consult, no one to support me and I feel depressed... I imagine how the great jihad will take place,"

Abdulmutallab said.

"How the Muslims will win, and rule the whole world," he wrote, adding, "Do I have to clarify anything further?"

In 2005, he was chatting under the screen name Farouk1986.

On, January 26, 2007, CBS News said Abdulmutallab listed seminars for what was called the 'War on Terror Week'.

In an online video, Asim Qureshi, one of the speakers in the seminar, said, "We know it is incumbent upon all of us to support jihad against the oppression of the West."

According to The Washington Post, in a posting in January 2005, Farouk1986 spoke about his loneliness and his "dilemma between liberalism and extremism" as a Muslim.

As a student at the British boarding school in Togo, Farouk1986 wrote that he was lonely, the daily said.

"I'm active, I socialise with everybody around me, no conflicts, I laugh and joke but not excessively," he wrote in one posting seeking counseling from online peers.
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Source: ANI