Bomber was on US watch list
US authorities have known for months that the al Qaeda-linked Nigerian who tried to blow up a passenger jet before it landed in Detroit had terrorist ties -- and his own father even alerted them to his extremist behavior, it was revealed yesterday.
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Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, who was charged in federal court with attempting to destroy Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day, remained hospitalized with burns suffered in the failed attempt.
He was read the charges at a hearing, where he appeared smiling in a medical gown and a wheelchair.
NEW RULES CREATING FOUL AIR EXPERIENCE
Several key details came to light yesterday:
* Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen sewed into Abdulmutallab's underwear a condom filled with three ounces of a nitroglycerin-like compound after he spent a month training with the terror organization, sources told ABC News.
"One flight attendant asked him what he had had in his pocket, and he replied, 'Explosive device,' " according to the Justice Department.
* Abdulmutallab was added to the 550,000 suspects on a watch list kept by the US National Counterterrorism Center in November and had been on government radar for months. Yet there wasn't enough negative information about him to put him on the no-fly list.
* His father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, a prominent Nigerian banker who retired recently, reportedly contacted the US Embassy there about six months ago to inform authorities about his son's increasingly extreme behavior.
* Michigan Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said he believes Abdulmutallab is linked to radical US-born Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi, a mentor to the US Army psychiatrist who gunned down 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, last month.
* Abdulmutallab -- who boarded a flight in Nigeria to Amsterdam, and then transferred to Northwest Flight 253 to Detroit -- did not go through full-body scans at either airport, and it's unclear how he was screened as a transferring passenger in Amsterdam.
Red-faced authorities were attempting to figure out how Abdulmutallab managed to get a visa and elude security in two countries despite the fact that British officials just last May denied him a student visa after he brazenly applied using a fake college name.
"Had this alleged plot to destroy an airplane been successful, scores of innocent people would have been killed or injured," US Attorney General Eric Holder said.
Abdulmutallab's father, was shocked that his son was allowed on any US-bound flight, especially after the dad warned officials in June that his son was consorting with terrorists.
The father was reportedly cooperating with authorities, and acknowledged that his son "might have been to Yemen," Mutallab told The Associated Press.
A family friend said Abdulmutallab made two trips to there for Arabic and Islamic studies.
Dutch officials said his name was on a passenger manifesto forwarded to the United States from Amsterdam before takeoff, and the list was cleared. He had a US visa valid for the first half of 2010 that was reportedly issued in 2008.
It's unclear how thoroughly he was searched by security at Amsterdam's airport -- and if he was ever checked for liquids -- although normal procedures may not have caught Abdulmutallab's contraption.
He sat silently for most of the flight, finally making his move as the jet approached Detroit.
Abdulmutallab told passengers his stomach was upset, then pulled a blanket over himself, court papers said.
Passengers heard popping noises and smelled smoke before at least one passenger -- Dutch national Jasper Schuringa -- bravely tackled the would-be bomber.
Investigators told ABC News that the device may have failed because the detonator was too small or did not have "proper contact" with the explosives -- enough to bring the plane down.
As details of the onboard drama continued to surface, former schoolmates remembered Abdulmutallab as a devout Muslim loner who began his descent into extremism in his mid-teens.
"You could see how this could happen," a pal from The British School of Lomé, Togo, told The Post.
"He was very, very religious, even in those days. Nothing extreme then, but you could maybe see the potential in a person like him."
Abdulmutallab headed a Sunday meeting for Muslims at the school at the same time Christians had their prayer meeting. He was known as "Alfa," slang for an Islamic scholar.
"He was studying chemical engineering, and he got top grades," the classmate said. "He didn't have a lot of friends."
Abdulmutallab showed his dark side after 9/11, when he defended the hijackers in a debate with his classmates.
"I was saying how it could never, ever be justified," the schoolmate said. "But he said, 'In a state of war, there are certain actions that have to be taken.'
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