Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is the youngest of 16 children The father was described by
The Times in 2009 as being "one of the richest men in Africa." The family comes from
Funtua in
Katsina State. Abdulmutallab was raised initially in an affluent neighbourhood of
Kaduna, in Nigeria's north. He also attended
The British School of Lomé, Togo. He was considered a gifted student, and enjoyed playing
PlayStation games and basketball.
London: September 2005 – June 2008 Abdulmutallab began his studies at
University College London in September 2005, where he studied Engineering and Business Finance, and earned a degree in mechanical engineering in June 2008. He was president of the school's Islamic Society, which some sources have described as a vehicle for peaceful protest against the actions of the United States and the United Kingdom in the
war on terrorism. During his tenure as president, along with political discussions, the club participated in activities such as martial arts training and paintballing; at least one of the Society's paintballing trips involved a preacher who reportedly said: "Dying while fighting
jihad is one of the surest ways to paradise." One lecture,
Jihad v Terrorism, was billed as "a lecture on the Islamic position with respect to jihad". At the age of 21, Abdulmutallab told his parents that he wanted to get married; they refused on the grounds that he had not yet earned a master's degree. After graduating from university, Abdulmutallab made regular visits to the family town of Kaduna, where his father was known for financing local mosque construction and other public works.
Dubai: January–July 2009 In May 2009, Abdulmutallab tried to return to Britain, ostensibly for a six-month "life coaching" program at what the British authorities concluded was a fictitious school; the
United Kingdom Border Agency denied his visa application. His name was placed on a UK
Home Office security watch list which, according to BBC News, meant that he could not enter the UK. Passing through the country in transit was permissible and he was not permanently banned; the UK did not share the information with other countries. This status was based on his visa application being rejected to prevent
immigration fraud rather than for a national security purpose.
Yemen: August–December 2009 Intelligence officials suspect that
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula member,
Anwar al-Awlaki, may have directed Abdulmutallab to Yemen for al-Qaeda training. Abdulmutallab's father agreed in July 2009 to his son's request to return to the San'a Institute for the Arabic Language in Yemen, to study Arabic from August to September 2009. A fellow student at the Institute said Abdulmutallab would start his day by going to the mosque for dawn prayers and then spent hours in his room reading the
Quran. Ahmed Mohammed, one of his teachers, said Abdulmutallab spent the last 10 days of
Ramadan sequestered in a mosque. He apparently left the institute after a month, while remaining in-country. His family became concerned in August 2009 when he called to say he had dropped the course, but was remaining in Yemen. "He told me his greatest wish was for
sharia and Islam to be the
rule of law across the world," said one of his classmates at the institute. In October 2009, Abdulmutallab sent his father a text message saying that he was no longer interested in pursuing an MBA in Dubai, and wanted to study
sharia and Arabic in a seven-year course in Yemen. He sent more texts stating he would be cutting off contact and disowning his family. Yemeni officials have said that Abdulmutallab travelled to the mountainous
Shabwah Province to meet with "al-Qaeda elements" before leaving Yemen. The tape includes a statement justifying his actions against "the Jews and the Christians and their agents." In February 2010, a Yemeni security official said that 43 people were being interrogated for links to the Christmas Day attempt, including foreigners, some of them studying Arabic and others married to Yemeni women. Abdulmutallab was thought to have used Arabic studies as a pretext for entering the country.
Saïd Kouachi, one of the attackers—now deceased—in the
Charlie Hebdo shooting, is believed to have been one of Abdulmutallab's neighbors at the Yemeni Arabic language school.
Awareness by US intelligence On 11 November 2009, British intelligence officials sent the US a cable indicating that a man named "Umar Farouk" had spoken to al-Awlaki, pledging to support
jihad, but the cable did not give Abdulmutallab's last name. On 19 November, Abdulmutallab's father consulted with two
CIA officers at the US Embassy in
Abuja, Nigeria, reporting his son's "extreme religious views", and told the embassy that Abdulmutallab might be in Yemen. Acting on the report, the CIA added the suspect's name in November 2009 to the US's 550,000-name
Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, a database of the
National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). It was not added to the FBI's 400,000-name
Terrorist Screening Database, the terror watch list that feeds both the 14,000-name
Secondary Screening Selectee list and the US's 4,000-name
No Fly List, nor was Abdulmutallab's American visa revoked. Abdulmutallab's name had come to the attention of intelligence officials many months before that, but no "derogatory information" was recorded about him. The NCTC did not check to see whether Abdulmutallab's American visa was valid, or whether he had a British visa that was valid; they did not learn that the British had rejected Abdulmutallab's visa application earlier in 2009. The user name posted on
Facebook and on Islamic Forum (gawaher.com). On 28 December 2009, a U.S. government official said the government was reviewing the online postings, and has not yet independently confirmed the authenticity of the posts. CNN reported that by 2005, the postings of
Farouk1986 revealed "a serious view of his religion." Philip Rucker and Julie Tate of the
Washington Post reviewed 300 online postings by
Farouk1986 , and found that "the writings demonstrate an acute awareness of Western customs and a worldliness befitting Mutallab's privileged upbringing as a wealthy Nigerian banker's son." In January 2006 he chastised female users for not wearing the
hijab and stated that it was not appropriate for men and women to be friends. He also described jihadist fantasies about Muslims engaging in a worldwide jihad and establishing a Muslim empire.
Contact with Islamists The New York Times reported in December 2009 that "officials said the suspect told them he had obtained plastic explosives that were sewn into his underwear and a syringe from a bomb expert in Yemen associated with al Qaeda." In April 2009, Abdulmutallab had applied to attend an Islamic seminar in Houston, Texas. He obtained a multiple-entry visa in the U.S. Consulate in June 2008 that would be valid until June 2010. He attended the Islamic seminar from 1–17 August at
AlMaghrib Institute. When Abdulmutallab returned to Yemen later in 2009, purportedly to study Arabic again, he appeared to have undergone a personality change: he was more religious and "a loner", and wore traditional Islamic clothing. He rarely attended class, and sometimes he left class midway to go pray at a mosque.
Ties to Anwar al-Awlaki A number of sources reported contacts between Abdulmutallab and Anwar al-Awlaki, an American Yemeni Muslim lecturer and spiritual leader who had been accused of being a senior al-Qaeda talent recruiter and motivator. Al-Awlaki, who was killed by an unmanned United States drone in Yemen in September 2011, was previously an
imam in the U.S. He was associated with three of the 9/11 hijackers, who prayed at his mosque; the
2005 London Bombings; a
2006 Toronto terror cell; a
2007 Fort Dix attack plot; and the 2009
Fort Hood shooter. With a blog and a Facebook page, al-Awlaki had been described as the "
bin Laden of the internet." As a fluent English speaker, he had used contemporary technology to communicate with a wide circle of people in the West. Despite being banned from entering the UK in 2006, al-Awlaki spoke via video-link in 2007–09 on at least seven occasions at five different venues in Britain. During this period he gave a number of video-link lectures at the
East London Mosque before being banned by the mosque in 2009.
Pete Hoekstra, the senior
Republican on the
House Intelligence Committee, said on the day of the attack that Obama administration officials and officials with access to law enforcement information told him "there are reports [the suspect] had contact [with al-Awlaki].... The question we'll have to raise is, was this imam in Yemen influential enough to get some people to attack the U.S. again." He added: "The suspicion is ... that [the suspect] had contact with al-Awlaki. The belief is this is a stronger connection with al-Awlaki" than Hasan had. Hoekstra later said credible sources told him Abdulmutallab "most likely" has ties with al-Awlaki.
Meetings with Al-Awlaki The Sunday Times established that Abdulmutallab first met and attended lectures by al-Awlaki in 2005, when he was first in Yemen to study Arabic.
Fox News reported that evidence collected during searches of "flats or apartments of interest" connected to Abdulmutallab in London showed that he was a "big fan" of al-Awlaki, based on his web traffic. However, there is no clear evidence that the two men met in London.
NPR reported that, according to unnamed intelligence officials, Abdulmutallab attended a sermon by al-Awlaki at the
Finsbury Park Mosque "in the fall of 2006 or 2007",
CBS News and
The Sunday Telegraph initially reported that Abdulmutallab attended a talk by al-Awlaki at the East London Mosque (which al-Awlaki may have participated in by video teleconference), but the mosque officials said that the
Sunday Telegraph was misinformed. They said that "Anwar Al Awlaki did not deliver any talks at the ELM between 2005 and 2008".
CBS News said that the two were communicating in the months before the bombing attempt, and sources say that, at a minimum, al-Awlaki was providing spiritual support. According to federal sources, over the year prior to the attack, Abdulmutallab increased his electronic communications with al-Awlaki. Intelligence officials suspect al-Awlaki may have directed Abdulmutallab to Yemen for al-Qaeda training. After being arrested, Abdulmutallab reportedly told the FBI that al-Awlaki was one of his trainers when he did al-Qaeda training in remote camps in Yemen. There were "informed reports" that Abdulmutallab met al-Awlaki during his final weeks of training and indoctrination prior to the attack. A U.S. intelligence official said that information pointed to connections between the two: Some of the information ... comes from Abdulmutallab, who ... said that he met with al-Awlaki and senior al-Qaeda members during an extended trip to Yemen this year, and that the cleric was involved in some elements of planning or preparing the attack and in providing religious justification for it. Other intelligence linking the two became apparent after the attempted bombing, including communications intercepted by the
National Security Agency indicating that the cleric was meeting with "a Nigerian" in preparation for some kind of operation. Yemen's Deputy Prime Minister for Defence and Security Affairs, Rashad Mohammed al-Alimi, said Yemeni investigators believe the suspect travelled in October to Shabwa, where he met with suspected al-Qaeda members. They met in a house built and used by al-Awlaki to hold theological sessions, and Abdulmutallab was trained and equipped there with his explosives. At the end of January 2010, a Yemeni journalist,
Abdulelah Haider Shaye, said he met with al-Awlaki, who said he had met and spoken with Abdulmutallab in Yemen in the autumn of 2009. Al-Awlaki reportedly said Abdulmutallab was one of his students, that he supported his actions but had not ordered him, and that he was proud of the young man. A
New York Times journalist listened to a digital recording of the meeting, and said that while the tape's authenticity could not be independently verified, the voice resembled that on other recordings of al-Awlaki. On 6 April 2010,
The New York Times reported that US President Barack Obama had authorised the
targeted killing of al-Awlaki. The cleric was killed in an American drone attack in Yemen on 30 September 2011. ==Attack==