[Reader-list] Nigerian Bomber - A devout Muslim

[Kshmendra Kaul]

"Nigerian 'bomber' devout, broke contact: family"
 
by Aminu Abubakar Aminu Abubakar – Sun Dec 27
 

KANO, Nigeria (AFP) – A Nigerian charged with trying to blow up a US airliner was a devout Muslim who had broken contact with his family several weeks ago, relatives stunned by his attempted attack told AFP on Sunday.
 
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, was charged Saturday at the US hospital where he was being treated for burns sustained while trying to detonate a powerful explosive on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit with 290 people on board.
 
"He was such a brilliant boy and nobody in the family had the slightest thought he could do something as insane as this," a relative told AFP from Nigeria's northern city of Kaduna.
 
"Farouk was a devoted Muslim who took his religion seriously and was committed to his studies," he said on condition of anonymity.
 
Most of the family only met up with him on his return to Nigeria on holidays from his studies abroad but found him to be easy-going and passionate about Islam, a cousin said.
 
"He was of course a very religious, polite and studious fellow but it was unthinkable that he would do anything close to attempting to bomb a plane. I still can?t believe this is for real," the cousin said, also asking anonymity.
 
US security officials told the media on Saturday that Abdulmutallab had confessed to training with an Al-Qaeda bombmaker in Yemen.
 
Abdulmutallab had announced he wanted to pursue a summer course in Arabic in Yemen in July and his banker father had consented given his flair for the language, said the cousin, who also did not want to be named.
 
But the family had become concerned when the young man announced that he wanted to stay on in Yemen and drop his post-graduate programme in business administration at Dubai University.
 
"We became worried when in August Farouk called and said he was no longer interested in his post-graduate studies anymore, saying he would be staying in Yemen to pursue another course he did not disclose," said another relative who gave his name only as Sani.
 
Their alarm was heightened when he sent a text message a few days later informing his family that he was severing all contact with them, he said. Since then they had not been able to get in touch with him, he said.
 
His father Umaru Mutallab, a former chief of the United Bank for Africa and First Bank of Nigeria, later decided to tell the US embassy in Nigeria and Nigeria Intelligence Agency about his concerns about his son.
 
The family was stunned by the young man's attempt to blow up the Northwest Airlines as it descended into Detroit. He had caught the plane in Amsterdam after flying in from Lagos.
 
"We could not believe it when we learnt that Farouk had boarded a flight from Lagos to Amsterdam while all along we had the impression that he was in Yemen," Sani said.
 
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091227/wl_africa_afp/usattacksnigeriayemenfamily_20091227165847