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SANA’A, Yemen (Telegraph) – The Detroit bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was linked to a Muslim extremist under surveillance by MI5 while he was living in Britain, it has emerged.
The Security Service have found that the 23-year-old was connected to a suspect it was investigating while he was studying at university in London.
The connection was discovered after record checks by MI5 following the attempted suicide bombing on Christmas Day by Abdulmutallab on a US-bound plane.
It has also emerged that the bomber wrote of his desire for Muslims to “rule the whole world” by carrying out a “great jihad” in internet postings four years before he tried to carry out a suicide bomb attack on a passenger jet.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab used an online Islamic forum to describe his “jihad fantasies” when he was aged just 18, a year before he came to Britain to begin a three-year engineering course at University College London.
He wrote the blog in 2005, when he was still a student at a British-run boarding school in west Africa. It has also emerged that he went on to attended a three-month Arabic summer school later that year in Yemen, the country where he has told US investigators he was later trained in bomb-making by al-Qaeda.
The internet postings provided crucial clues to his increasing radicalisation, but were not discovered until after his attempt to carry out the terrorist attack.
He had earlier complained of being “lonely” because he did not go “partying” like other people and had “never found a true Muslim friend”.
When he began his postings he wrote enthusiastically about his love of football, saying he supported Liverpool, but after beginning his studies at UCL he became more radical, saying: “Let’s save our honour and religion and try and stay away from football and do sporting activities that are more Islamically beneficial.”
He also said music was forbidden, criticised his parents for eating meat which had not been slaughtered by Muslims and scolded women who did not wear the hijab. He also made postings referring to a visit to UCL by the former Guantánamo detainee Moazzam Begg.
One former friend said Abdulmutallab had become “more religious” during his time at UCL, which has been accused of being “complicit” in the radicalisation of Muslim students because of its liberal attitude towards extremist preachers visiting the campus.
PRAISE FOR 9/11 TERRORIST ATTACK
The bomber also praised the 9/11 terrorist attacks when he was a teenager, telling one schoolfriend they were “an act of war”. The unnamed friend said: “We were talking about 9/11. I was saying under no circumstances could it ever be OK to kill all those innocent people. He was much more equivocal.
“He called 9/11 an act of war – American troops were on Saudi soil and had humiliated Muslim countries so these actions might be necessary. That’s the only time I had an argument with him.”
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab president of university Islamic society
(Times Online) – The Christmas Day airline bomb plot suspect organised a conference under the banner “War on Terror Week” [posted on gawahar.com by farouk1986] as he immersed himself in radical politics while a student in London, The Times has learnt.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, a former president of the Islamic Society at University College London, advertised speakers including political figures, human rights lawyers and former Guantánamo detainees.
One lecture, Jihad v Terrorism, was billed as “a lecture on the Islamic position with respect to jihad”.
The event he organised took place in January 2007 and included talks on Guantánamo Bay, the alleged torture of prisoners and the War on Terror.
He is the fourth president of a London student Islamic society to face terrorist charges in three years. One is facing a retrial on charges that he was involved in the 2006 liquid bomb plot to blow up airliners. Two others have been convicted of terrorist offences since 2007.
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
