Obama orders air security review
Updated on 27 December 2009
President Obama has ordered an urgent review of air travel security, in the wake of the failed attempt by a UK-educated Nigerian to blow up a passenger jet over Detroit. Simon Israel reports.
A 23-year-old Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, has been charged with trying to detonate high explosives that were attached to his body.
US officials say there are no indications his attack was part of a wider plot but are investigating any al-Qaida link.
Transatlantic passengers have been warned to expect delays and have been told they must remain seated for the last hour of their journey into America.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was no stranger to the UK, from school trips to London, to a university degree in mechanical engineering.
By all accounts he was a devout Muslim.
Yet from a makeshift court set up in a hospital ward in Detroit where he is being treated for third degree burns, the 23-year-old graduate was last night formally charged with attempting to blow up an aircraft.
Tonight Nigerian government ministers said he had sneaked into the capital, Lagos, on Christmas eve, and the same day boarded a KLM flight to Amsterdam's Schiphol airport with a $3,000 ticket bought eight days earlier.
The next morning, after passing through transit security checks, metal detectors and baggage X-ray, he took a flight for Detroit, armed with a multiple-entry US visa issued in London in 2008 when he was a student.
US officials now say his device was made up of a small packet of 80gm of powerful powder explosive, PETN, and a syringe containing a liquid detonator, both sewn into his underwear.
What saved the passengers’ lives was that the detonator failed.
The US government suspects this one-man, al-Qaida-inspired mission was orchestrated in Yemen, from where a warning was issued just before Xmas.
The US placed him on the database of suspected terrorists only last month after his own father warned them of his son's views. But Abdulmutallab's name was not added to the "no-fly" list.
One Whitehall source has confirmed to Channel 4 News that MI5 is now reviewing its investigations over the last four years to see if Abdulmuttallab's name, phone numbers or presence comes up on the periphery of such inquiries.
