Details: Not Guilty plea entered for Christmas Day bombing suspect

Alex P. Kellogg

TERROR suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab pleaded not guilty on Friday in a federal court in Detroit on a six-count indictment for allegedly attempting to blow up a Detroit-bound plane and murder its 279 passengers and 11 crew members.

Mr Abdulmutallab entered the courtroom just before 2 pm Friday shackled by his feet and wearing a white T-shirt, khaki pants and blued shoes.

He is accused of strapping explosives in his pants that failed to detonate and instead set him on fire on a Christmas day Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

His trip originated in Nigeria, where his father had earlier alerted authorities to his radical turn

US officials had information that could have led them to block Mr Abdulmutallab from boarding the plane, Obama administration officials said yesterday, but intelligence analysts failed to assemble the picture of the plot.

Representatives of the militant group al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, based in Yemen, have claimed credit for organising the attack.

Judge Mark A. Randon presided Friday, asking the suspect a series of questions during the brief hearing about his mental state and fitness to stand trial Friday.

When asked, he told a judge he had taken pain medication in the last day

Mr Abdulmutallab made his first appearance in court amid crowds of journalists.

Scores of Muslim Americans held up anti-terrorism mantras on posters and waved large American flags outside the coutroom.

A handful of Nigerian-born Americans joined in, with signs such as “Nigerians Are Against Terrorism.”

Mr Abdulmutallab will remain detained but has the right to a hearing on the matter.

His next appearance in court was not immediately set Friday.

No new details were provided in an indictment earlier this week as to how the suspect was able to board a plane in Amsterdam with two types of explosives hidden in his pants, or how he gained a US visa.

The Australian

Dutch to use full-body scanners

The Dutch government has said that it will commence using full-body scanners on flights to the US from Amsterdam's Schiphol airport within three weeks, after a failed Christmas Day airliner bomb attack.

The interior ministry made the announcement on Wednesday after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian, boarded a flight from Lagos to Detroit in the US, via Schiphol, with highly explosive material sewn into his underwear.

An investigation by the Dutch government will look into the incident, but a preliminary inquiry said that the plot was of professional standard but its execution was "amateurish".

"It is not exaggerating to say the world has escaped a disaster," Guusje Ter Horst, the interior minister, said.

Abdulmutallab passed through a security check that included a hand baggage scan and a metal detector, during the lay over in Amsterdam on Friday, Ter Horst said.

For his part, Erik Ackerboom, head of the Dutch counterterrorism bureau, dismissed suggestions that Abdulmutallab should have aroused suspicion when he paid for a round-trip ticket from Lagos to Detroit in cash and had no check-in luggage.

Paying cash in Africa is not unusual, he said, and the lack of a checked suitcase "wasn't a reason for alarm".

Schiphol airport already has 15 body scanners, but privacy concerns have restricted their use and the issue has been previously raised in the European parliament.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Ter Horst said: "We will use them for American passengers flying to the United States and we do not need the approval of the European parliament."

Nadim Baba, Al Jazeera's correspondent in The Hague, said: "We've been hearing from people in the Netherlands that they are quite willing to undergo that [full-body scanning] to make sure that they're safe when they travel.

"The Dutch authorities want to widen the use of these full-body scanners that can see through people's clothes.

"Now there have been objections to that in Europe for privacy reasons, and health reasons, and not so long ago the European parliament actually blocked the introduction of these full-body scanners across Europe.

"They did allow Schiphol airport to introduce them on a reduced basis and they [the Dutch authorities] say that they've tweaked the technology now so that a computer, rather than a person, looks at the first image, so the privacy issue is now out of the way they say."

Abdulmutallab carried 80 grams of the highly explosive PETN onto the Northwestern Airlines flight, and allegedly assembled the device in the aircraft's toilet.

He is then believed to have attempted to detonate the device with a syringe of chemicals.

Part of the aircraft's cabin wall was set alight and Abdulmutallab suffered burns, before the situation was brought under control by passengers and crew.

Schiphol airport was said to have carried out the required security checks correctly and US authorities had cleared the passenger list.

The New York Times reported on Wednesday that two US officials, who it did not name, had said that the US government had intelligence from Yemen before Christmas Day that leaders of a branch of al-Qaeda had mentioned that "a Nigerian" was being prepared for a terrorist attack.

"No suspicious matters which would give reason to classify the person involved as a high-risk passenger were identified during the security check,'" Ter Horst said.

She said that full-body wave scanners are able to identify chemicals, unlike metal detectors currently used on passengers.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Norman Shanks, ex-head of security at the British Airport Authority, said: "Since 9/11 there have been significant increases in airport security.

"The European Community then set common standards for all its states and some others joined those measures, such as Switzerland.

"These are higher than other nations' standards."

Shanks said that trials of body scanners had been held at airports, for example at Schiphol and London's Heathrow, and that they are quite effective in identifying items under clothing.

"The reason they are not used as a matter of routine is the belief held by many people that it infringes human liberties," he said.

The use of body scanners, which cost the equivalent of $125,000-$140,000 per unit in the UK compared to $6,500-$9,500, is set to increase the cost of security measures, Shanks said.

It will also require extra space and time to scan passengers.

"I think we will see a growing trend towards observation of passengers to select those who appear not to be acting normally," Shanks said.

"This has been called profiling, but it is assessing people's behaviour."

Al Jazeera

Somali arrested at airport with chemicals, syringe

A man tried to board a commercial airliner in Mogadishu last month carrying powdered chemicals, liquid and a syringe that could have caused an explosion in a case bearing chilling similarities to the terrorist plot to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner, officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The Somali man — whose name has not yet been released — was arrested by African Union peacekeeping troops before the Nov. 13 Daallo Airlines flight took off. It had been scheduled to travel from Mogadishu to the northern Somali city of Hargeisa, then to Djibouti and Dubai. A Somali police spokesman, Abdulahi Hassan Barise, said the suspect is in Somali custody.

"We don't know whether he's linked with al-Qaida or other foreign organizations, but his actions were the acts of a terrorist. We caught him red-handed," said Barise.

A Nairobi-based diplomat said the incident in Somalia is similar to the attempted attack on the Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day in that the Somali man had a syringe, a bag of powdered chemicals and liquid — tools similar to those used in the Detroit attack. The diplomat spoke on condition he not be identified because he isn't authorized to release the information.

Barigye Bahoku, the spokesman for the African Union military force in Mogadishu, said the chemicals from the Somali suspect could have caused an explosion that would have caused air decompression inside the plane.

However, Bahoku said he doesn't believe an explosion would have brought the plane down.

A second international official familiar with the incident, also speaking on condition of anonymity because he isn't authorized to discuss the case, confirmed that the substances carried by the Somali passenger could have been used as an explosive device.

In the Detroit case, alleged attacker Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab hid explosive PETN in a condom or condom-like bag just below his torso when he traveled from Amsterdam to Detroit.

Like the captured Somali, Abdulmutallab also had a syringe filled with liquid. The substances seized from the Somali passenger are being tested.

The November incident garnered little attention before the Dec. 25 attack aboard a flight on final approach to Detroit. U.S. officials have now learned of the Somali case and are hastening to investigate any possible links between it and the Detroit attack, though no officials would speak on the record about the probe.

U.S. investigators said Abdulmutallab told them he received training and instructions from al-Qaida operatives in Yemen — which lies across the Gulf of Aden from Somalia. Similarly, large swaths of Somalia are controlled by an insurgent group, al-Shabab, which has ties to al-Qaida.

Western officials say many of the hundreds of foreign jihadi fighters in Somalia come in small boats across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen. The officials also say that examination of equipment used in some Somali suicide attacks leads them to believe it was originally assembled in Yemen.

Law enforcement officials believe the suspect in the Detroit incident tried to ignite a two-part concoction of the high explosive PETN and possibly a glycol-based liquid explosive, setting off popping, smoke and some fire but no deadly detonation.

Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian national, is charged with trying to destroy an aircraft.

A Somali security official involved in the capture of the suspect in Mogadishu said he had a 1-kilogram (2.2-pound) package of chemical powder and a container of liquid chemicals. The security official said the suspect was the last passenger to try to board.

Once security officials detected the powder chemicals and syringe, the suspect tried to bribe the security team that detained him, the Somali security official said. The security official said the suspect had a white shampoo bottle with a black acid-like substance in it. He also had a clear plastic bag with a light green chalky substance and a syringe containing a green liquid. The security official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information.

The powdered material had the strong scent of ammonia, Bahoku said, and samples have been sent to London for testing.

The Somali security officials said the Daallo Airlines flight was scheduled to go from Mogadishu to Hargeisa, to Djibouti and then to Dubai.

A spokeswoman for Daallo Airlines said that company officials weren't aware of the incident and would have to seek more information before commenting. Daallo Airlines is based in Dubai and has offices in Djibouti and France.

YahooNews

Analysis: Similar explosive on plane used in Saudi attack

On August 28, the Saudi Arabian deputy minister of interior, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, (pictured) survived a bombing attack launched by an al Qaeda cell based in Yemen, Saudi Arabia's southern neighbor.

Abdullah Hassan al Asiri, the would-be assassin, a Saudi who had fled to Yemen, posed as a militant willing to surrender personally to Prince Nayef.

Because he leads Saudi Arabia's counterterrorism efforts against al Qaeda, the prince is a key target for the terrorist group.

Al Asiri concealed the bomb, made of PETN, in his underwear, according to the official Saudi investigation.

PETN is a plastic explosive that is not picked up by metal detectors -- through which the would-be assassin had to pass before he was allowed to meet with the prince.

Saudi officials believe that the prince's assailant exploded the 100-gram device using a detonator with a chemical fuse, which would also not be detected by a metal detector.

When the bomb went off in Prince Nayef's Jeddah home it killed the assassin, but the prince survived the attack, sustaining only minor injuries.

Similarly, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly attempted to bring down Northwest Airlines flight 253 using a PETN bomb that was not discovered by metal detectors.

A federal security bulletin obtained by CNN said Abdulmutallab claimed to investigators that the explosive device used Friday "was acquired in Yemen along with instructions as to when it should be used."

A senior U.S. counterterrorism official says it is "rare" for PETN to be used in a terrorist attack.

The method of concealment, the use of PETN and the origin of the bomb -- Yemen -- make the Prince Nayef assassination attempt and the Northwest plot an almost perfect match.

"I believe that, after the attack on the prince, the fear of using similar techniques against airplanes, which was discussed openly in the media, has encouraged al Qaeda cells to try it," a Saudi counterterrorism official said,

PETN was also used by Richard Reid, an al Qaeda recruit known as the shoe bomber.

He concealed a bomb made of PETN in his sneakers when he tried to bring down an American Airlines flight flying from Paris, France, to Miami, Florida, almost exactly eight years ago during the busy holiday travel season.

CNN

Al-Qa'ida attack on US airline fails

A MAN who attempted to light an explosive aboard a US jetliner as it landed in Detroit told investigators he was affiliated with Al-Qa'ida.

CNN, citing a federal bulletin, said the man told investigators he had acquired the explosive in Yemen, along with instructions as to when it should be used.

President Barack Obama, who is vacationing with his family in Hawaii, was notified about the incident and held a conference call with his national security team, CNN reported.

The White House later said that Mr Obama has ordered increased security for air travel following the possible attempted airline bombing on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

Sandra Berchtold, an FBI spokeswoman in Detroit, said the incident on the airline was under investigation.

The Australian

Islamist Forums Teach Mujahideen How to Manufacture and Use Explosives, Weapons, and Poisons

By D. Nagy

In recent years jihadist organizations have been using the Internet for purposes of indoctrination, propaganda, recruitment, and maintaining morale among the mujahideen. In addition, Internet forums provide venues not only for sharing views, but for exchanging information that serves the operative needs of the mujahideen, such as guidance in guerilla warfare techniques, and information on manufacturing and using explosives, weapons, and poisons. Read more ...

Source: MEMRI

Prosecutor: Students Had Explosives

TAMPA, Fla. -- A federal prosecutor disputes defense claims that two Egyptian college students arrested near a South Carolina Navy weapons station were carrying harmless fireworks and not dangerous explosives.

An attorney for Youssef Samir Megahed filed a motion last week asking a judge to reconsider granting bail. He cited an FBI report that characterized the items found in the trunk of the car as a pyrotechnic mixture that burned but didn't explode when tested.

But federal prosecutor Jay Hoffer, in a motion filed Monday opposing bond for Megahed, said defense attorney Adam Allen "mischaracterized" the FBI report in describing the items in the trunk as harmless.

Hoffer said the items including PVC pipe containing a mixture of sugar and potassium nitrate and capped with cat litter meet the federal legal definition of explosives. FBI analysts determined that the mixture could explode if it was packed more tightly in the pipe and capped, Hoffer wrote. Read more ...

Source: AP