Sana`a: Yemen has provided the most comprehensive account yet of contacts between al Qaeda and the Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a US airliner, saying he may have met with a radical US-born cleric who previously had contact with the alleged Fort Hood shooter.
In the weeks before the attempted airliner attack, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab met with al Qaeda operatives in a remote mountainous region that was later hit in an air strike that targeted a gathering of the group`s top leaders, Yemen`s Deputy Prime Minister said yesterday.
The account by Rashad al-Alimi, who oversees security issues in the government, filled in some of the blanks in Abdulmutallab`s movements before his failed attempt to detonate explosives on a Christmas Day flight to Detroit.
But al-Alimi also raised new questions. He contended that Abdulmutallab was recruited by al Qaeda in Britain and that the 23-year-old received the explosives in Nigeria. US
officials say Abdulmutallab told FBI investigators that al Qaeda operatives in Yemen gave him the material and trained him in how to use it.
Abdulmutallab came to Yemen in August, ostensibly to study Arabic at a Sana`a language institute where he previously studied from 2004-2005. But he disappeared in September, and his whereabouts were unknown until he left the country on December 4.
Al-Alimi said that at some point during that period, the Nigerian met with al Qaeda, among those he may have met with was the US-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who has also been linked to the gunman who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in November.
PTI
