Kerry Invites Father of Nigerian Terror Suspect to Testify to Senate Panel

[Luftmensch067]

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry has invited the father of alleged Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to testify at a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

In a Jan. 7 letter to the Nigerian ambassador to the United States obtained by Dow Jones, the senator wrote that Dr. Umaru Mutallab acted "in a heroic fashion by alerting U.S. authorities to his concerns about his son's whereabouts and activities, and by seeking to disrupt what he believed could have been a dangerous situation."

"We would like to afford (Mutallab) the opportunity to discuss his experience with his son and to provide his recommendations on the process by which he worked with U.S. authorities," Kerry wrote.

Sorry to link to Faux News!
foxnews.com/politics/2010/01/11/kerry-invites-father-nigerian-terror-suspect-testify-senate-panel/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+foxnews%252Fpolitics+%2528Text+-+Politics%2529

Edited to deaden link

[JI7]

1. i hope he accepts

[karynnj]

2. I hope he does to and I hope the offer included the possibility

of it being closed door.

What the father did was extremely remarkable. He went to a foreigne country's embassy and informed their that his son was someone who could be a terrorist. This man, a respectable pillar of his own community, likely had to have had a very hard journey reaching that point. Clearly this is not what he raised his son to be. It is hard to imagine The pain he felt seeing the little boy that he almost certainly loved and had great expectations for turn into something that he was against he felt he had to warn the world.

It would be interesting to hear the father's view of what forces led to this change on the part of his son. I doubt the father would have the solution - as he was unable to pull his own son away - but he likely has a perspective that is worth hearing.

I think he would have less to offer in speaking of what the US should have done with his warning. I hope Kerry will have an oversight hearing on what changes the State Department is making as they were the part of the US government that issues VISAs and the part that contains the embassies where the warning came in - and the SFRC has oversight here.

[MBS]

3. fantastic

I continue to be moved about that father -- how difficult that must have been for him to go to the Embassy to talk about his own son. I hope it happens (Karynnj's suggestion of a closed-door session makes a lot of sense).
In the kind of political climate we have right now, I've found myself worrying about the father's safety, at home in Nigeria and wherever. .