US says air security measures failed
Updated on 28 December 2009
The United States admits its air travel security measures failed, after a Nigerian man was allegedly able to smuggle deadly explosives onto a US-bound plane, in an attempt to blow it up. Simon Israel reports.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's family said today they had alerted security agencies that he had disappeared months ago and were prepared to help the authorities investigate.
Asked on NBC's Today show if the security system had "failed miserably," US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano replied: "It did."
The family of 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who is facing charges in the Christmas day incident aboard the Amsterdam to Detroit flight, said they had reported his disappearance to security agencies months ago after becoming concerned about his increasing militancy.
Under US questioning, the suspect had claimed al-Qaida operatives in Yemen supplied him with an explosive device and trained him on how to detonate it, an official said.
Abdulmutallab was overpowered by passengers and crew on the Northwest Airlines flight 253 after setting alight an explosive device attached to his body. He was treated for burns and is in a federal prison awaiting trial over the incident.
President Barack Obama, on vacation in Hawaii, is under pressure from opposition Republicans who have been critical of his response to the scare and have questioned whether his administration is doing enough to contain security threats.
The Democratic president was scheduled to make his first public statement on the incident later today. The Christmas day scare dashed Barack Obama's hope of spending his vacation basking in the afterglow of the senate's passage of healthcare reform, his signature domestic issue, and switching gears to focus on US job growth as he wraps up his first year in office.
Instead, the White House has spent the past few days seeking to reassure the public that the president is paying close attention and is focussed on keeping Americans safe.
"The president is actively monitoring the situation and receiving regular updates," White House spokesman Bill Burton said.
The first federal court hearing for the suspect, which had been due to take place this afternoon in Detroit, has been cancelled, a spokeswoman for prosecutors said.
US attorneys had been expected to seek a search warrant to collect a swab of DNA from the suspect. No reason was given for the cancellation of the hearing before US District Judge Paul Borman.
Bail for Abdulmutallab is scheduled to be set at 8 January hearing in Detroit. The US Transportation Security Administration said it had stepped up pre-flight screening in the United States and Europe. The security scare drove airline stocks down in early trading today in New York.
The TSA did not give details of new measures, but air travellers described new security restrictions on flights headed for the United States, including additional pre-flight screening, and - an hour before landing - a ban on movement around the cabin and on carrying items such as blankets on passengers' laps.
On Sunday, Napolitano said the system to protect air travel worked, but in appearances on news shows today she said she had meant that the response to alert other flights and airports and impose immediate safety procedures had been effective.
Napolitano was asked on NBC if the suspected attempt to destroy a plane represented a new form of threat that the screening system was not equipped to handle. "I wouldn't go that far," she said.
"What I would say is that our system did not work in this instance. No one is happy or satisfied with that. An extensive review is under way."
"At this point we feel that with the additional screening procedures in place ... the additional protective measures within aircraft... that air travel is safe while we work our way through this problem."
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said on ABC television on Sunday: "There's much to investigate here. It's amazing to me that an individual like this who was sending out so many signals could end up getting on a plane going to the US."
Abdulmutallab's father, a respected Nigerian banker, had told US officials he was concerned that his son's radicalised behaviour could pose a threat, and his name was on a broad US list of possible security threats.
But he was not on the much smaller "no-fly" list. In a statement to Nigerian media, the Mutallab family said: "His father, having become concerned about his disappearance and stoppage of communication while schooling abroad, reported the matter to Nigerian security agencies about two months ago and to some foreign security agencies about a month and a half ago."
It said the fact that he had ended communication with his family was "completely out of character and a very recent development".
Nigerian media had quoted family members as saying the father had been uncomfortable with his son's "extreme religious views" and had reported him to the US embassy.
Dutch military police said they were investigating the possibility that Abdulmutallab might have had help from an accomplice before boarding the flight at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport.
A US couple on the flight, Kurt and Lori Haskell, told Reuters and other news agencies they saw a tall, well-dressed man aged about 50 with Abdulmutallab on Friday morning.
"At this moment we have no information on whether there was another guy," a military police spokesman said. "We are checking all clues and information we get."
