Detroit, April 13: The Nigerian man dubbed the ‘Underwear Bomber’ after allegedly trying to blow up a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day in an Al-Qaeda plot returns to a US courtroom Tuesday.
The pretrial hearing will deal with scheduling issues, a spokeswoman for his court-appointed lawyer told.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, pleaded not guilty in January to six terrorism related charges, including attempted murder of 290 people on board the plane and trying to use a weapon of mass destruction.
He faces a maximum penalty of life imprisonment if convicted.
The son of a prominent Nigerian banker, Abdulmutallab was arrested after the botched Al-Qaeda plot, in which explosives allegedly stitched into his underwear failed to detonate aboard a Northwest flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.
It was not US intelligence that thwarted the attack, but passengers and crew, who tackled and restrained Abdulmutallab before he was escorted off the plane.
The foiled bombing triggered global alarm, leading the United States to adopt stringent new screening and security measures at airports around the world.
Probes revealed that US analysts knew Abdulmutallab was an extremist and that Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was plotting an attack, but did not connect the information.
Abdulmutallab’s first court appearance since his January arraignment comes days after a Qatari diplomat sparked a security scare by smoking in the restroom on a US plane and joking he was trying to set his shoe on fire.
Abdulmutallab has been cooperating with interrogators after counter-terrorism officials enlisted some of his relatives in a bid to get him to talk.
Legal experts believe this case is going to take months to come to a conclusion, even if he eventually reaches a plea deal with prosecutors.
-Agencies