Date Published: 01/08/10

Abdulmutallab Pleads Not Guilty in Plane Attack Plot…Faces life Without Parole

Jan. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab , the man accused of trying to destroy a Northwest Airlines plane carrying 290 people on Christmas Day, pleaded not guilty to U.S. criminal charges.

The 23-year-old Nigerian entered his plea on Friday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Randon in Detroit. As the flight approached the city’s airport, Abdulmutallab ignited his pants leg and a wall of the plane while trying to detonate a mixture of explosives he smuggled aboard, according to prosecutors.

In a hearing that took less than five minutes, Abdulmutallab, wearing a white T-shirt, beige pants and black- and-white shoes, told the judge he understood the charges against him.

The U.S. intelligence community’s failure to interdict the plot prompted President Barack Obama yesterday to order federal agencies to set clearer lines of responsibility for following up on leads on terrorist threats, to streamline criteria for adding names to watch lists, and to tighten airport security measures.

After Abdulmutallab tried to trigger an explosion on Flight 253 from Amsterdam, passengers and crew restrained him until the aircraft landed, prosecutors said.

Indicted on Jan. 6, Abdulmutallab is accused of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, attempted murder, willfully trying to wreck an aircraft, placing a destructive device upon an aircraft and faces separate counts of possessing and using a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence.

Possible Life Term

“The charges that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab faces could imprison him for life,” U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in a Jan. 6 statement announcing the indictment.

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency said it learned about Abdulmutallab in November when his father, the former chairman of First Bank of Nigeria Plc , went to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria to seek help in finding him.

Abdulmutallab was on the government’s Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment list, which names about 550,000 individuals with possible terrorist links. He hadn’t been moved from the so- called TIDE database to a terrorism watch list, or to the “selectee” list of about 14,000 names that triggers additional screening at airports, or to the “No Fly” list of about 4,000 names, according to Janet Napolitano , the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security.