Yemen Details Actions of Suspect Before Bomb Attempt

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Source: NYTimes

By STEVEN ERLANGER
Published: January 7, 2010

SANA, Yemen — A senior official here said Thursday that the young Nigerian man accused of trying to bring down an airliner approaching Detroit on Christmas Day had met with Qaeda operatives and probably with Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American-born Internet preacher, in Yemen before setting out on his journey.

But the official, Rashad al-Alimi, the deputy prime minister for national security and defense, cited Yemeni investigations and said that the Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, had acquired the explosives used in the failed attack not in Yemen, which he left on Dec. 4, but in Nigeria, where he changed planes at the Lagos airport on Dec. 24, boarding a flight to Amsterdam and then Detroit.

Mr. Alimi’s remarks, made at a news conference in Sana, offered Yemen’s most definitive public reconstruction of Mr. Abdulmutallab’s movements before the attack. But the account differed in many respects from those of British, Ghanaian and Nigerian officials, on crucial points: where he was recruited, where he obtained the explosives, even how long he spent in the Nigerian airport.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/world/middleeast/08yemen.html?hpw