Julia Carp
Staff Writer
On December 25, 2009, America escaped a terrorist attack as an Airbus A330 wide-body jet departing from Amsterdam was carrying 278 passengers heading to Detroit, Michigan. As the plane was landing, a 23-year-old Nigerian man tried to ignite an explosive device as an act of terrorism. This device, consisting of powder and liquid, luckily failed to explode, thus preventing a catastrophic occurrence.
Who is this man and how did he get these explosives on the plane? Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attended the University of London and dropped out of a postgraduate business course in Dubai. He told his family he had gone to Yemen to study Islam and then cut off contact with them. Abdulmutallab’s father is a former government minister and recently retired as chairman of the First Bank group in Nigeria. He even warned U.S. diplomats about his son, suggesting that he might be a security risk. Abdulmudtallab has the explosive powders sewn into his underwear before he boarded the plane. While on the plane, he mixed them with chemicals held in a syringe. Abdulmutallab was badly burned by the ignition of the explosives and was sent to the University of Michigan Hospital for treatment.
U.S. politicians are demanding to know how Abdulmutallab got on the plane even after his own father had warned U.S. officials. Obama’s spokesman is trying to figure out why this man was placed on the least urgent list of three U.S. watch lists of possible terrorism suspects; considering the man’s father provided the U.S. government with a tip of a possible second coming of September 11, 2001, he should have been in a higher category which would have prevented him from flying. Obama criticized the intelligence of the U.S. saying officials, “failed to connect the dots”.
On one of the busiest travel weekends of the year, thousands of Americans were inconvenienced by another close call of terrorist activity in American airspace. Flights were delayed by several hours. People were rushed through extra security checks and had their hand luggage thoroughly searched. Some reports said that security personnel unwrapped presents in travelers’ bags. President Obama promised to have more body scanners at American airports and stimulate research into better technology for screening.
On Friday, January 8th, Abdulmutallab pleaded not guilty to criminal charges in federal court. He was charged on six counts, including one that could result in a life sentence; attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. Investigators in Yemen and the U.S. have linked Abdulmutallab to Al Qaeda. Yemeni officials say he acquired the explosives in Nigeria.
Just three weeks ago, we celebrated the end of the 2000’s, a turbulent decade in American history to say the least. Ironically, it seemed as though we closed the decade in very similar fashion to the way the decade began: terrorist attack on American soil, the attack is linked to Al Qaeda in the Middle East, American agencies receive word about a prospective attack but cannot put the pieces together due to a lack of communication. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? We need to make sure we do not repeat the events of the previous decade. They say that Iraq is Bush’s Vietnam, but we need to hope that Yemen does not become Obama’s Iraq.