Farouk Abdulmutallab The road to life imprisonment
His trial was expected to be a long one. But Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the then 23-year-old Nigerian, who tried to bomb a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day in 2009, pleaded guilty on the first day and ended the trial abruptly.
The trial was expected to witness a practical demonstration of how underwear bomb works. An expert witness was on stand-by for the demonstration. The prosecutors were also ready to play video recordings of three demonstrations conducted by an expert. Also planned was a video showing Farouk Abdulmutallab and others training in a desert camp, shooting weapons at targets, including the Jewish star and the British Union Jack. The tape also includes a statement , justifying his actions against “the Jews and the Christians and their agents.”
But Abdulmutallab was not ready for all that. Last October, he pleaded guilty on first day of the trial. He paved the way for his sentencing, which will come later today. Abdulmutallab said: “I attempted to use an explosive device, which in the US law is a weapon of mass destruction, which I call a blessed weapon to save the lives of innocent Muslims, for US use of weapons of mass destruction on Muslim populations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and beyond.”
After his sentencing today, Abdulmutallab, detained at a federal prison in Milan, may be moved to a federal super-maximum prison in Florence, Colorado, where other convicted terrorists are serving their time.
His court-appointed lawyer, Anthony Chambers, some days back filed a document arguing that a mandatory life sentence for the Nigerian would be unfair for a crime that did not hurt any passenger on the Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines Flight 253.
Chambers said the only passenger injured was Abdulmuttallab, who had his groin severely burnt before the fire ignited by the bomb in his underwear was put out by other passengers.
Abdulmutallab should actually be lookig forward to a life sentence. After all, he planned his 23rd birthday to be his last. December 22, 2009 was his 23rd birthday. That day, he was in Accra, the Ghanaian capital. At other times, the graduate of Mechanical Engineering from the University College, London would have been with his siblings and parents for the birthday and the Yuletide. Rather than join other members of the family, Abdulmutallab was putting finishing touches to a suicide mission that could have killed more than 100 people, three days after turning 23.
A day after what he thought was going to be his last birthday on earth, he returned home to Nigeria via the Kotoka International Airport. He did not make contact with his parents, whom he had denounced some months earlier.
His trip to Lagos was only on transit to Amsterdam. He had no plans to make the trip to Detroit, United States, the airline’s final destination. He planned to blow the plane up with an underwear explosive device mid-air. But, the explosive failed him. He was arrested and taken into custody.
And on December 22, last year, he clocked 25 inside the Federal Correctional Institution, Milan, Michigan.
al-Qaeda’s Yemen-based arm claimed responsibility for the failed attack, which was also hailed by the late Osama bin Laden, just months before the al Qaeda’s leader was killed in a U.S. commando raid in Pakistan.
He lent credence to his relationship with acclaimed terrorists when during the pre-trial stage, he shouted: “Osama’s alive,” as he entered the courtroom. At some point, he hollered ‘jihad’ and stared at the ceiling when Judge Nancy Edmunds told jurors about the alleged plot to blow up the plane with a bomb in his underwear. On another occasion, he hollered: “al-Awlaki is alive.” He made the remark about a week after al-Waki was killed.
There are evidences Abdulmutallab was radicalised through the Internet and his meeting with al-Awlaki.
Abdulmutallab’s plot to take advantage of the fact that his first statement was taken without his Miranda Rights read to him was aborted on September 18, last year, when Judge Edmunds handed the President Barack Obama administration a major victory in its approach to Miranda Rights for terror suspects, endorsing the interpretation of the public safety exception.
The judge said: “The agents limited their questioning to approximately 50 minutes, a period sufficient enough to get information to address the threat to public safety.”
Edmunds said the agents handling the case were “mindful of defendant’s self-proclaimed association with al-Qaeda and knowing the group’s past history of large, coordinated plots and attacks and feared that there could be additional, imminent aircraft attacks in the United States and elsewhere in the world.”
Two days ago, details of his plot with Awlaki was released. They were contained in documents filed to back up request for his sentence to life imprisonment. The documents show that Abdulmutallab, after making contact with Awlaki, spent three days at the late cleric’s house discussing martyrdom and “jihad”.
al-Awlaki introduced him to a bomb maker for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, who made the bomb for him to attack an American airliner.
“Prior to the defendant’s departure from Yemen, Awlaki’s last instructions to him were to wait until the airplane was over the United States and then take it down,” one of the filings said.
To drive home the argument that he deserves to rot in jail, the U.S. government, in the document, noted: “When the airplane was about to cross over the United States border, they said, he went to the restroom, washed his face, brushed his teeth, put on cologne, returned to his seat, said prayers, and then pushed the plunger on the device — but it failed to detonate.”
One of the documents added that he told his interrogators that he interpreted the failure of the bomb to explode as evidence that “it was not his time to die”.
Certainly, it is not his time to die. It is a time to change address from the Federal Correctional Institution, Milan, Michigan, to the super-maximum prison in Florence, Colorado, which is home to many convicted terrorists.
His trial was expected to be a long one. But Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the then 23-year-old Nigerian, who tried to bomb a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day in 2009, pleaded guilty on the first day and ended the trial abruptly.
The trial was expected to witness a practical demonstration of how underwear bomb works. An expert witness was on stand-by for the demonstration. The prosecutors were also ready to play video recordings of three demonstrations conducted by an expert. Also planned was a video showing Farouk Abdulmutallab and others training in a desert camp, shooting weapons at targets, including the Jewish star and the British Union Jack. The tape also includes a statement , justifying his actions against “the Jews and the Christians and their agents.”
But Abdulmutallab was not ready for all that. Last October, he pleaded guilty on first day of the trial. He paved the way for his sentencing, which will come later today. Abdulmutallab said: “I attempted to use an explosive device, which in the US law is a weapon of mass destruction, which I call a blessed weapon to save the lives of innocent Muslims, for US use of weapons of mass destruction on Muslim populations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and beyond.”
After his sentencing today, Abdulmutallab, detained at a federal prison in Milan, may be moved to a federal super-maximum prison in Florence, Colorado, where other convicted terrorists are serving their time.
His court-appointed lawyer, Anthony Chambers, some days back filed a document arguing that a mandatory life sentence for the Nigerian would be unfair for a crime that did not hurt any passenger on the Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines Flight 253.
Chambers said the only passenger injured was Abdulmuttallab, who had his groin severely burnt before the fire ignited by the bomb in his underwear was put out by other passengers.
Abdulmutallab should actually be lookig forward to a life sentence. After all, he planned his 23rd birthday to be his last. December 22, 2009 was his 23rd birthday. That day, he was in Accra, the Ghanaian capital. At other times, the graduate of Mechanical Engineering from the University College, London would have been with his siblings and parents for the birthday and the Yuletide. Rather than join other members of the family, Abdulmutallab was putting finishing touches to a suicide mission that could have killed more than 100 people, three days after turning 23.
A day after what he thought was going to be his last birthday on earth, he returned home to Nigeria via the Kotoka International Airport. He did not make contact with his parents, whom he had denounced some months earlier.
His trip to Lagos was only on transit to Amsterdam. He had no plans to make the trip to Detroit, United States, the airline’s final destination. He planned to blow the plane up with an underwear explosive device mid-air. But, the explosive failed him. He was arrested and taken into custody.
And on December 22, last year, he clocked 25 inside the Federal Correctional Institution, Milan, Michigan.
al-Qaeda’s Yemen-based arm claimed responsibility for the failed attack, which was also hailed by the late Osama bin Laden, just months before the al Qaeda’s leader was killed in a U.S. commando raid in Pakistan.
He lent credence to his relationship with acclaimed terrorists when during the pre-trial stage, he shouted: “Osama’s alive,” as he entered the courtroom. At some point, he hollered ‘jihad’ and stared at the ceiling when Judge Nancy Edmunds told jurors about the alleged plot to blow up the plane with a bomb in his underwear. On another occasion, he hollered: “al-Awlaki is alive.” He made the remark about a week after al-Waki was killed.
There are evidences Abdulmutallab was radicalised through the Internet and his meeting with al-Awlaki.
Abdulmutallab’s plot to take advantage of the fact that his first statement was taken without his Miranda Rights read to him was aborted on September 18, last year, when Judge Edmunds handed the President Barack Obama administration a major victory in its approach to Miranda Rights for terror suspects, endorsing the interpretation of the public safety exception.
The judge said: “The agents limited their questioning to approximately 50 minutes, a period sufficient enough to get information to address the threat to public safety.”
Edmunds said the agents handling the case were “mindful of defendant’s self-proclaimed association with al-Qaeda and knowing the group’s past history of large, coordinated plots and attacks and feared that there could be additional, imminent aircraft attacks in the United States and elsewhere in the world.”
Two days ago, details of his plot with Awlaki was released. They were contained in documents filed to back up request for his sentence to life imprisonment. The documents show that Abdulmutallab, after making contact with Awlaki, spent three days at the late cleric’s house discussing martyrdom and “jihad”.
al-Awlaki introduced him to a bomb maker for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, who made the bomb for him to attack an American airliner.
“Prior to the defendant’s departure from Yemen, Awlaki’s last instructions to him were to wait until the airplane was over the United States and then take it down,” one of the filings said.
To drive home the argument that he deserves to rot in jail, the U.S. government, in the document, noted: “When the airplane was about to cross over the United States border, they said, he went to the restroom, washed his face, brushed his teeth, put on cologne, returned to his seat, said prayers, and then pushed the plunger on the device — but it failed to detonate.”
One of the documents added that he told his interrogators that he interpreted the failure of the bomb to explode as evidence that “it was not his time to die”.
Certainly, it is not his time to die. It is a time to change address from the Federal Correctional Institution, Milan, Michigan, to the super-maximum prison in Florence, Colorado, which is home to many convicted terrorists.
No comments:
Post a Comment