Student charged over air terror bid

Dec 26 2009

The US Justice Department has charged the alleged Christmas Day terrorist with attempting to destroy a plane.

The 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly had a device containing a high explosive attached to his body, the Justice Department said.

The Justice Department alleged that as the flight neared Detroit Metropolitan Airport on Friday, Abdulmutallab set off the device, but it sparked a fire instead of an explosion.

According to an affidavit filed in the federal court in Detroit, a preliminary analysis of the device showed that it contained PETN, also known as pentaerythritol.

That was one of the explosives carried by Richard Reid, the British "shoe bomber" who was convicted of trying to blow up a plane as it flew to the United States a few months after the September 11 2001 attacks.

Meanwhile, Scotland Yard said officers were searching two to three properties in central London, and British security officials are working closely with their counterparts in the US, Holland, Nigeria and Yemen to try to find out how the suspect allegedly came so close to causing catastrophe.

It also emerged the man arrested had been on a US counter-terrorism database for two years.

A US official said the suspect had appeared on the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment list.

The database, which is maintained by the US National Counterterrorism Centre, includes people with known or suspected contacts or ties to a terrorist or terrorist organisation. It is said to comprise around 550,000 names.