Detroit, October 05: A Nigerian man accused of trying to bring down an international jetliner with a bomb in his underwear walked into the start of his federal trial on Tuesday and declared that a radical Islamic cleric killed by the US military is alive.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s outburst came as jury selection got under way for his federal terror trial in Detroit, where the 24-year-old is acting as his own attorney and has previously told reporters they should stop reporting that Osama bin Laden was dead.
“Anwar is alive,” Abdulmutallab said today, referring to American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed last week by a joint CIA-US military air strike in Yemen.
“The mujahadeen will wipe out the US — the cancer US,” he added.
Abdulmutallab, a well-educated Nigerian from an upper-class family, was directed in the attack by al-Awlaki and wanted to become a martyr when he boarded Northwest Airlines Flight 253 in Amsterdam a Christmas 2009, according to the government.
Abdulmutallab, who complained loudly at a previous hearing about having to wear prison clothes, came into the courtroom today wearing an oversized prison T-shirt.
US District Judge Nancy Edmunds called a brief recess to allow him to change into clothes more appropriate for court, after acknowledging and denying his apparent request to wear a “Yemeni belt with a dagger”.
The judge has denied several of Adulmutallab’s requests for the trial, including that the case be judged under Islamic law.
Abdulmutallab has pleaded not guilty to eight charges, including conspiracy to commit terrorism and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.
The government says he wanted to blow up the plane by detonating chemicals in his underwear, just seven minutes before the jet carrying 279 passengers and a crew of 11 was to land at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.
But the bomb didn’t work, and passengers assisted by crew members saw flames and pounced on Abdulmutallab.
The failed suicide attack, the first act of terrorism in the US during the Obama administration, revealed the rise of a dangerous al Qaeda affiliate and al-Awlaki’s growing influence.
The government says Abdulmutallab willingly explained the plot twice, first to US border officers who took him off the plane and then in more detail to FBI agents who interviewed him at a hospital for 50 minutes, following treatment for serious burns to his groin.
Abdulmutallab told authorities he trained in Yemen, home base for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
–Agencies