By Kenneth Ehigiator, with agency report
LAGOS—Officials of American Homeland Security would meet the Presidency and aviation officials in Abuja tomorrow over the attempt by a Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, to blow up a Northwest airliner at Detroit, U.S.A, last Christmas Day

The meeting is part of the American government’s ongoing investigation into the matter, especially as Mutallab’s trip originated from Lagos.

A source told Vanguard yesterday that the Homeland Security officials were in the country to sift video evidence of how the suspect beat security screening at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos.

Meantime, it has been established by the American security agencies that Abdulmutallab spent years reaching the radical point of no return and the attempt to blow up a passenger jet that he is now accused of committing in the United States.

A lot more is known now about the Nigerian’s final movements before taking the plane from Amsterdam to Detroit allegedly wearing high explosives sewn into his underwear.

But how he came into the Al-Qaeda net and how he was trained for the Christmas Day attempt on the Northwest Airlines jet are key questions that US prosecutors must answer, experts say.

U.S investigators  in Nigeria

According to sources, the U.S. government wants to know how seriously its Nigerian counterpart had taken security at airports in the country.

The source said: “The Homeland Security officials will be meeting with senior Presidency and aviation officials in Abuja tomorrow over the Mutallab’s issue.  They want to see video footage of how the suspect was screened at the airport before he boarded the KLM plane that took him out of Lagos.

“I can tell you that all the relevant government agencies at the airport have been holding security meetings in preparation for this meeting. The essence is to ensure that presentation before the U.S. officials would be water-tight for synergy.”

The meeting, it was learnt, would be attended by the National Security Adviser, General Sarki Mukhtar; Aviation Minister, Mr. Babatunde Omotoba; Director-General of Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Dr. Harold Demuren and Managing Director of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), among others.

Vanguard learnt that the U.S. officials are also out to see how personnel of the various security agencies at the airports have worked together to forestall security breaches, especially against the backdrop of the four 3D scanner machines the U.S. government donated to the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) a few years ago.

The U.S. government, it was gathered, would also seek to know why the scanner machines were not also deployed for U.S.-bound passengers.

The source told Vanguard that the Federal Government was not happy that the 3D scanners have not been maximally utilised to boost security at airports, as they were solely monopolised by the NDLEA to check drug trafficking.

The source said government would use the opportunity to highlight what it had done to raise the bar as far as security was concerned at the nation’s airports and in what areas Nigeria needed assistance with regards to airport security.

“All along, we have deceived ourselves that all is well at our airports.  This meeting will afford us the opportunity of letting the U.S. know where we are lacking in airport security, especially in the areas of training and equipment.

”We have had to lie low at that meeting because we bungled our first reaction to that attempted bomb incident.
“The Americans have also been talking to us about the need to introduce air marshal aboard flights in the country. This would just be the opportunity to assure them of this and other security measures we have put in place,” the source said.

Farouk’s  radical  trait led to bomb bid

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab spent years reaching the radical point of no return and the attempt to blow up a passenger jet that he is now accused of committing in the United States.

A lot more is known now about the Nigerian’s final movements before taking the plane from Amsterdam to Detroit allegedly wearing high explosives sewn into his underwear.

But how he came into the Al-Qaeda net and how he was trained for the Christmas Day attempt on the Northwest Airlines jet are key questions that US prosecutors must answer, experts say.

Investigators have followed a trail left by the 23-year-old Abdulmutallab that took him to Dubai, Ethiopia, Ghana, his home Nigeria and particularly several months which he spent and during which he partly disappeared in Yemen before the attempted attack.

The Nigerian appeared in court for the first time last Friday and a not guilty plea was entered on his behalf on six charges, including one of trying to blow up the jet and kill the 297 people on board.

US media reports said Abdulmutallab told interrogators that Al-Qaeda trained him in Yemen — but as for the ideological process that drew him closer to Osama bin Laden, much comment has focused on his years as an engineering student in London between 2005 and 2008.

Mutallab’s was radicalised in London

“The main radicalisation must have taken place in London where he got talked into it through the Internet and two or three preachers,” said Alain Chouet, a former French intelligence chief.

Various officials have also told how Abdulmutallab did extra studies in Dubai in 2009 and then went to the Yemen capital, Sanaa, to study Arabic for two weeks.

He went missing from Sanaa on the day his visa ran out on September 24 but reappeared there again 42 days later, just before the attack.

How Mutallab met  Al-Qaeda’s leader

Yemen’s Deputy Prime Minister for Defence and Security Affairs, Rashad al-Aleemi, said Abdulmutallab had met an Al-Qaeda leader, Mohammad Omair, in Yemen, as well as a radical cleric, Anwar al-Awlaqi.

Abdulmutallab met Awlaqi and Omair while hiding in the Shabwa area in Wadi Rafadh which was later hit by Yemeni jets in an attack on the militant hideout, he said.

The United States has accused Awlaqi, a US-Yemeni, of terrorist links and said that an army psychiatrist accused of shooting dead 13 people at a Texas military base in November, had also been in contact with him.

But the Yemeni minister insisted Abdulmutallab had already fallen in with extremists in London.

“When he went to Britain, it seems that he was recruited by (Islamist) militant groups,” and arrived in Yemen “after he had been recruited by Al-Qaeda,” he said.

Meanwhile, Britain’s Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, has acknowledged concern “about the possibility that Abdulmutallab’s radicalisation may have begun or been fuelled during his time studying at University College, London.”

But he said the Nigerian’s family “believe he turned to violent extremism after leaving the UK.”
Abdulmutallab was placed on a watchlist and barred from entering Britain in May 2009, British officials have said.

An Islamist specialist at France’s School for Higher Social Science Studies (EHESS), Dominique Thomas, said that despite efforts to stamp out extremism after deadly bombings in London in July 2005, “there still exist small centres of radicalism” in Britain.

Thomas said that once radicalised, the recruits head to Yemen and other countries in the region for religious instruction and Arabic lessons.

“At the campus in Sanaa, we know there can be recruitment of foreign students who can end up following a radical movement like Al-Qaeda,” Thomas said.

Aleemi said investigations had shown that explosives found on Abdulmutallab came from Nigeria, a claim Nigeria has disputed.

The United States has said Abdulmutallab’s name was added to a watchlist of some 550,000 people just before the attack, following warnings from his father to US officials in Abuja about his son’s increasing radicalism.

But Abdulmutallab’s name was not added to the no-fly list or the watch list, meaning the US visa he had been issued earlier was not cancelled and he was to get onto to the Christmas Day flight without extra security screening.