Photo Credit: guardian.co.uk
This past weekend brought the latest saga in America’s battle to keep our turf safe from terrorist. The Nigerian-born Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab has been charged with the attempted Christmas Day bombing of Northwest Airlines flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit. Abdulmutallab claims that he is from a production line of terrorists that has been trained in Yemen by al-Qaeda. The failed Christmas Day bombing was intended to kill all 289 people on board, but it failed only because the bomb’s detonator did not work.
The explosive device used by Abdulmutallab contained the chemical PETN– the primary ingredient in detonating cords used for industrial explosions. PETN was also an element of the explosive that the convicted “shoe bomber,” Richard Reid, used in his attempt to bring down an airliner in 2001.
Abdulmutallab is a member of an affluent Nigerian family and received some of the best schooling in his homeland of Africa. He also attended the University College London in the United Kingdom. After becoming estranged from his family as an adult, Abdulmutallab sought an extremist education at an Islamist breeding ground in Yemen.
According to the New York Times, the secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano , said today that Abdulmutallab’s thwarted bombing represented a failure of the nation’s aviation security system, contradicting the success she and other administration officials had portrayed in comments over the weekend:
Ms. Napolitano said Monday on NBC’S “Today” that her remark the day before — “the system has worked really very, very smoothly over the course of the past several days” — had been taken out of context. “Our system did not work in this instance,” she said. “No one is happy or satisfied with that. An extensive review is under way.”
On Sunday, President Obama ordered a review of the two most important sections of the aviation security system –watch lists and detection equipment at airport checkpoints. President Obama plans to make a statement on this situation later today from the Kaneohe Marine Base in Hawaii.
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Tags: al-Qaeda, America, Amsterdam, Christmas Day, Detroit, Janet Napolitano, London, Nigeria, President Obama, Terrorism, Yemen
