I’m the first of many, warns airline ‘bomber’

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a terrorist cell led by a former personal secretary to Osama bin Laden, issued a statement saying that the failed attack by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a response to American-backed airstrikes on the group in Yemen this month. Yemeni government forces, acting on US intelligence and using what officials have admitted was American military hardware, launched air raids on suspected militants in the east of the country on December 17 and again on December 24. At least 60 people were understood to have been killed.

Mr Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian who set himself alight in a packed Airbus approaching Detroit on Christmas Day, bought his one-way ticket from a KLM office in Accra, the Ghanaian capital, on December 16, indicating that his attack was planned well before these latest air raids. A US military effort to deny al-Qaeda a stronghold in Yemen has been under way for at least a year.

The fresh-faced engineering graduate was transferred yesterday from hospital in Detroit to a federal prison in Milan, Michigan, where agents questioning him said he told them that he was one of many bombers being groomed by the Yemeni alQaeda affiliate to attack American-bound aircraft, according to ABC News. The Yemeni authorities confirmed yesterday that Mr Abdulmutallab had been in the country since August.