Washington: It was the world wide web
including chats and e-mails that helped al-Qaeda to contact,
recruit, train and equip Nigerian "underwear" bomber Umar
Farouk Abdulmutallab "within weeks" to try to blow up a US
plane on the Christmas Day, a top Pentagon official has said.
This reflects, how the extremist groups have been
increasingly using Internet as a recruitment tool, which
otherwise could have taken months, if not years, to hire and
train a terror suspect, said Garry Reid, Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defence for Special Operations and Combating
Terrorism.
23-year-old Abdulmutallab had allegedly unsuccessfully
tried to use a bomb hidden in his underwear to blow up a
Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam on
December 25 last year.
"While poverty, repressive regimes and lack of
opportunity play a role for some people ... (to join) violent
extremist groups, we must not lose sight of the role of
ideology in attracting new recruits and we must find
appropriate ways to counter the ideology that drives violent
extremism," Reid said in his testimony before the Senate Armed
Services Committee.
PTI
First Published: Friday, March 12, 2010, 17:00