Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 25, pleaded guilty to attempting to blow up a commercial plane as a would-be suicide mission for al-Qaeda. His family quickly called on the US government to review the sentence. Abdulmutallab was badly burned when a bomb sewn into his underwear failed to detonate fully, prosecutors said. Almost people were on the flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. Some of the passengers from the flight were in the courtroom as Federal Judge Nancy Edmunds announced the sentence.
The son of a Nigerian banker and a former engineering student at University College London, Abdulmutallab faced eight counts against him, including terrorism and attempted murder. In statement to the BBC, the family of Abdulmutallab said they were "grateful to God that the unfortunate incident of that date did not result in any injury or death". Ahead of the sentencing, assistant defence lawyer Anthony Chambers argued that a life sentence for Abdulmutallab would be unconstitutional, since no other passengers were hurt.
Sentencing guidelines directed the judge to impose a mandatory life sentence, but Mr Chambers appealed for a lighter term. After Abdulmutallab's attempt a few years ago, the TSA put in place new procedures and technologies to prevent someone else from smuggling explosives on board an aircraft in their clothing.
Shortly thereafter the general public took offense to these new security methods, and the TSA was required to rethink it policy , she adds. The joint CIA—Saudi intelligence operation to stop this latest attack, orchestrated by Yemen-based Sunni terrorist group al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula AQAP , coincides with several other significant terrorism-related developments of the past week. In addition to the recent one-year anniversary of former al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden 's assassination by U.
Scientific American spoke with Schaan about al Qaeda's continued attempts to take down airliners traveling to the U.
It further illustrates the fact that even though we've killed Osama bin Laden, Anwar al Awlaki [a key AQAP operative who died in a September drone air strike ] and several other al Qaeda leaders, we have not stopped the threat they pose. Why would al Qaeda be trying to develop a new underwear bomb, after the first attempt failed? An underpants bomb is worn under a person's clothes, just like a diaper.
The people behind these plots understand not only the TSA's security procedures but how they are tolerated—or in this case not tolerated—by travelers in the Western world, and the terrorists used this knowledge to design their attacks.
The plotters might not have gone back to an underpants bomb if the TSA had continued with the more intensive screening procedures it had in place. Although Abdulmutallab was stopped, how was he able to get as far as he did with his planned attack? Abdulmutallab began his journey in Lagos, Nigeria, on December 24, and the initial security screening would have occurred there. The Lagos airport has had a well-known reputation for lax security.
PETN, [the explosive] which Abdulmutallab tried to use, is widely available. It can easily be detected if checked by dog, swab or "puffer" machine, but it's hard to detect in a sealed container.
In addition, passengers are most often checked only by magnetometers. After the incident, Abdulmutallab told Customs and Border Protection officer Marvin Steigerwald that he obtained the device in Yemen and that he hid it in his underwear. When he was questioned later by two FBI agents, Abdulmutallab said he went to Yemen to become involved in jihad and that he was influenced by a man named Abu Tarak to undertake a suicide operation, investigators said.
Intelligence officials said that while in Yemen, Abdulmutallab also met with Anwar al-Awlaki. In March , Awlaki released a tape praising Abdulmutallab. After Abdulmutallab's arrest, his family in Nigeria released a statement saying they had been so concerned about his political extremism that they had reported him to Nigerian authorities and to "foreign security agencies" months before the bombing.
The statement said that Abdulmutallab's recent behavior was "completely out of character and a very recent development, as before then, from very early childhood, Farouk, to the best of parental monitoring, had never shown any attitude, conduct or association that would give concern.
A senior U. More than chat room posts traced to his e-mail account by ABC News show the course of his radicalization. In high school Abdulmutallab described himself as "very ambitious and determined.
He was concerned he would not get into college at Caltech, Stanford or Berkeley because of his test scores. It was a disaster!!! I didn't practice well and I got The judge rejected the argument. Prosecutors brought a video showing the detonation of a replica of the device AbdulMutallab attempted to use. The judge ruled that the video could be shown during the sentencing hearing. In the sentencing report, prosecutors called now year-old Nigerian "an unrepentant would-be mass murderer, who views his crimes as divinely inspired and blessed.
AbdulMutallab previously pleaded not guilty to the eight charges against him, which include attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism.
0コメント