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Northwest Airlines Flight 253

A Northwest Airbus A330 with Delta Air Lines livery, similar to the one involved in the incident aboard flight 253
Attempted terrorist attack
Date	December 25, 2009; approximately 12:30 pm
Summary	Failed bombing with pentaerythritol tetranitrate
Site	Romulus, Michigan, U.S. 42°12′29″N 83°21′22″W / 42.208°N 83.356°W / 42.208; -83.356
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Airbus A330-323X
Operator	Northwest Airlines
Registration	N820NWdisaster
Flight origin	Amsterdam Airport Schiphol
Destination	Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport
Passengers	278
Crew	11
Fatalities	0
Injuries	2 passengers and 1 suspect (Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab)
Survivors	289 (all)

The Northwest Airlines Flight 253 bombing attempt was a failed terrorist attempt to blow up a transatlantic flight to Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport near Detroit, Michigan, United States, from Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam on Christmas Day, December 25, 2009.

Two passengers were wounded, in addition to the suspected bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The suspect was taken into custody, and charged by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) with bringing a destructive device onto, and attempting to destroy, a U.S. civil aircraft.

Incident

On June 12, 2008 Abdulmutallab applied for a US visa at the US consulate in London. On June 16, 2008, the London US consulate issued him a US multiple-entry visa that would be valid until June 12, 2010. From August 1-17, 2008, he visited Houston, TX. In January 2009, he attended University of Wollongong in Dubai. He was refused a visa to return to Britain in May, 2009 because the school on his application form was not a government-approved institution. He received a visa to study Arabic in a school in Sana'a, Yemen which he attended from August to December, 2009. On December 16, 2009 Abdumutallab purchased his $2,831 Lagos-Amsterdam-Detroit ticket at the KLM office in Accra, Ghana with a January 8, 2010 return date.

On Christmas Eve, December 24, 2009, Abdulmutallab arrived in Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos, Nigeria and left Lagos the same day at 11 pm aboard KLM Flight 588, a Boeing 777, bound for Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. He left Amsterdam by a Northwest Airlines Airbus A330-300 twinjet, with 279 passengers, 8 flight attendants and 3 pilots aboard. His aircraft left Amsterdam around 8:45 a.m. local time (0745 UTC), and was scheduled to arrive in Detroit at 11:40 a.m. EST (1640 UTC), The aircraft was painted in Delta Air Lines' livery, as Northwest is a wholly owned subsidiary of Delta.

Witnesses reported that a passenger later identified as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian man, went into the plane's bathroom for about 20 minutes and after returning to his seat at 19A (near the fuel tanks and wing, and against the skin of the plane) complained that he had an upset stomach. He was then seen pulling a blanket over himself.

About 20 minutes before the plane landed, while flying over Middlesex County, Ontario, Canada, he secretly ignited a small explosive device consisting of a mix of flammable powder and liquid. He apparently had taped a packet of powder to his leg or groin, and used a syringe containing chemicals to cause a chemical reaction; though there appears to have been an explosion, and the lower part of his body caught on fire, the device failed to detonate properly. Passengers heard popping noises resembling firecrackers, smelled an odor, and saw the suspect's trouser leg and the wall of the plane on fire. A passenger said: "there was smoke and screaming and flames. It was scary." The explosion failed to cause much damage because the detonator was either too weak or did not make good contact with the explosive material.

No air marshals were on the flight. Several passengers and crew members noticed the attack. One Dutch passenger, Jasper Schuringa, ran forward to tackle and overpower the suspect, while flight attendants extinguished the fire with a fire extinguisher and blankets. Schuringa saw the suspect's pants were open, and that he was holding a burning object between his legs. "I pulled the object from him and tried to extinguish the fire with my hands and threw it away," Schuringa said. Schuringa suffered burns to his hands. A passenger removed a partially smoking syringe from the suspect's hand. Schuringa grabbed the suspect and pulled him to the front of the plane. A passenger reported that the suspect, though burned "quite severely" on his leg, seemed "very calm" and like a "normal individual." Schuringa stripped off the suspect's clothes to check for other explosives, and a crew member helped handcuff the suspect. "He was staring into nothing," Schuringa said. Passengers applauded as Schuringa walked back to his seat.

The suspect was isolated from other passengers until after the plane landed. A flight attendant asked the suspect what he had in his pocket, and the suspect replied: "explosive device".

When the attack triggered a fire indicator light within the cockpit, the pilot requested rescue and law enforcement. The incident was initially declared an in-flight emergency, before being deemed an attempted terrorist attack. The plane made an emergency landing at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport in the Downriver Detroit community of Romulus, Michigan just before 1 p.m. local time. The airport is about 20 miles southwest of Detroit and the adjacent international border.

While the plane itself suffered relatively little damage, the suspect suffered third-degree burns and two other passengers were injured. When the plane landed, the suspect was handed over to Custom and Border Protection officers, and taken into custody for questioning and treatment of his injuries in a secured room of the burn unit of the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor, and Schuringa was also taken to the hospital. One other passenger incurred minor injuries.

FBI agents arrived at the airport after the plane landed. The plane was moved to a remote area so authorities could re-screen the plane, the passengers, and the baggage on-board. A bomb-defusing robot was first used to board the plane. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) interviewed all passengers.

Explosives

The substance he tried to detonate was reportedly more than Template:G to oz of pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), a powerful plastic explosive. It is among the most powerful of explosives, in the same chemical family as nitroglycerin. The substance was analyzed at Quantico by the FBI. An FBI affidavit filed in the Eastern District of Michigan indicated that preliminary findings reflected that the device contained PETN, and that authorities found the remains of the syringe that may have contained chemicals used to trigger a detonation via chemical reaction. The suspect apparently carried it onto the plane in a soft plastic container, possibly a condom. However, much of the packaging was lost in the fire. Other reports suggested that the explosives were sewn into the suspect's underwear. ABC news cited a government test indicating that 50 grams of PETN can blow a hole in the side of an airliner and posted photos of the remains of Abdulmutallab's underwear and the syringe he used.

It is the same explosive that al-Qaeda member Richard C. Reid (the Shoe Bomber) tried to detonate Template:G to oz of in his shoes during an American Airlines flight in December 2001. In August 2009, an al-Qaeda bomber from Yemen blew himself up near the Saudi deputy Interior Minister in charge of counter-terrorism after also concealing PETN in his undergarments.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab

The suspect, who had earlier arrived in Amsterdam on KLM Flight 588 from Lagos, Nigeria, is Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. He is the youngest of 16 children of prominent former Nigerian Federal Commissioner for Economic Development and Chairman of First Bank of Nigeria Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, one of the richest men in Africa, and the son of the second of his father's two wives. He was raised initially in Kaduna, in Nigeria's Muslim-dominated north.

Abdulmutallab was reportedly strongly religious since he attended high school, at the British International School in Lomé, Togo, where he was known as a devout Muslim and for preaching about Islam to his schoolmates. After high school in 2005 he went to University College London, where he was president of the Islamic Society and where he earned a degree in mechanical engineering in June 2008. His last known address is a $4 million apartment on Mansfield Street, Central London, near the college, which was searched by the London Metropolitan Police. In May 2009, he tried to return to Britain for a six-month program at what the British authorities concluded was a fictitious school, so his visa application was denied by the United Kingdom Border Agency. His name was placed on a security list there, which BBC News said means they "cannot come into the UK, although they can pass through the country in transit and are not permanently banned".

His father agreed in July 2009 to his request to study Arabic in Yemen. His family became concerned in August 2009 when he called them to say he had dropped the course, but was remaining there. The Washington Post reported that several days later he sent a text message to his family, severing all ties with them. The family last had contact with Abdulmutallab in October 2009, at which time he was still in Yemen. The Yemeni Foreign Ministry said that he was in Yemen from early August 2009 until early December, and that it was not his first trip to the country.

His father made a report to the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria on November 19 regarding his son's "extreme religious views", and told the embassy that Abdulmutallab might be in Yemen. Acting on the report, the suspect's name was added in November 2009 to the US's 550,000-name Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, a database of the US National Counterterrorism Center, but not subsequently to the FBI's 400,000-name Terrorist Screening Database, the terror watch list that feeds both the 14,000-name Secondary Screening Selectee list and the US's 4,000-name No Fly List. The suspect's name had come to the attention of intelligence officials many months before that, but no "derogatory information" was recorded about him. A Congressional official said that Abdulmutallab's name appeared in US reports reflecting that he had connections to both al-Qaeda and Yemen. The suspect said he had made contact with al-Qaeda through the internet, with a radical imam.

The day following the incident, attorney Kurt Haskell, another passenger at Schiphol, said he had seen a "well-dressed man" ask airline employees if Abdulmutallab could board Flight 253 without a passport, suggesting Abdulmutallab was a "refugee from Sudan". Haskell and his wife then did not see Abdulmutallab until the incident on the plane. Abdulmutallab does have a multiple-entry visa issued by the US Embassy in London valid from June 2008 to June 2010, with which he visited the US twice, including Houston, Texas, in August 2008.

Two days after the incident, Abdulmutallab was released from the hospital in which he had been treated for burns sustained during the attempted bombing. He is in federal prison in Milan, Michigan.

Possible motive

The senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Pete Hoekstra, said officials in the Obama administration and officials with law-enforcement information access told him the suspect "may have been in contact with ... Anwar al-Awlaki. There are reports that he had contact and that he was recently in Yemen. The question we'll have to raise is was this imam in Yemen influential enough to get some people to attack the US again."

Al-Awlaki is the former imam linked to al-Qaeda, three of the 9/11 hijackers, Nidal Malik Hasan (the suspected Fort Hood shooter), and a Toronto terror cell, among others. Al-Awlaki regularly addresses British university Islamic societies by video links, and a forum at the East London Mosque, and his videos (in which he discusses his radical theories) have circulated in England.

Hoekstra added in an interview: "The suspicion is ... that had contact with al-Awlaki. The belief is this is a stronger connection with al-Awlaki" than Hasan had. On December 27 The Washington Post reported that Hoekstra said that credible sources told him the suspect "most likely" has ties with al-Awlaki. "That's a rather significant connection," said Hoekstra.

Similarly, Fox News reported on December 26 that Sky News sources said the suspect had links with al-Awlaki. And University of Oxford historian Mark Almond, Visiting Professor of International Relations at Turkey’s Bilkent University, wrote on December 27 that the suspect was "on American security watch-lists because of his links with Yemeni firebrand Anwar Al Awlaki".

The Times reported on December 28 that there are "informed reports" that Abdulmutallab met al-Awlaki during his final weeks of training and indoctrination for the attack. The same day Fox News reported that evidence collected during searches of "flats or apartments of interest" connected to Abdulmutallab showed that he was a "big fan" of al-Awlaki, as web traffic showed he was a follower of Awlaki's blog and website. On December 29 The Independent reported that he was in contact with al-Awlaki.

Hoekstra also said that the target of the attack may not have specifically been Detroit, but a destination similar to Detroit (which is Northwest's hub), with many incoming international travelers. The attack occurred over the city because the plane had not flown over US land prior to that time. In addition, an attack of this type (injecting chemicals into a substance to cause a chemical explosion) has not been used in previous terrorist plots, and it is possible that the attempt was a test to see if such materials could pass through screening, and how much damage the blast would cause.

The attack occurred on Christmas Day, and was near the eighth anniversary of the day Richard Reid's attempt to blow up a plane – also using PETN explosives – in Reid's case hidden in his shoe. The Taliban also released a video of Bowe Bergdahl, a captured US soldier, on the day of the attack.

Al-Qaeda involvement

SITE Intelligence, a U.S. monitoring group, quoted Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which indicated that it was responsibile for the attack, and said "the plot was to avenge US attacks on the militants in Yemen" according to BBC News. The NEFA Foundation posted Al Qaeda's statement.

While in custody, Abdulmutallab told authorities he had an extremist affiliation, and that he had been directed by al-Qaeda. A counterterrorism official told The New York Times on December 25 that his claim "may have been aspirational". But U.S. Representative Jane Harman (D-Calif.), Chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment, said the following day that a federal official briefed lawmakers about "strong suggestions of a Yemen-al Qaeda connection" with the suspect.

Abdulmutallab said that he obtained the device in Yemen, along with instructions from al-Qaeda as to how to use it and to detonate it when the plane was over US soil. Authorities have not yet confirmed his statements. He had, however, recently spent time in Yemen, which is also where his mother is from.

According to The New York Times on December 26, Abdulmutallab told FBI agents he contacted a radical Yemeni cleric online (who was not believed to be al-Awlaki) who connected him to the al-Qaeda affiliate.

Reactions and investigations

The investigation into the incident is being managed by the FBI. It was not immediately known how the suspect managed to smuggle the incendiary device past airport security, and what training he received, if any. An investigation was initiated into whether the attempted attack was part of a larger, possibly worldwide plot.

President Barack Obama was notified of the incident by an aide while on a vacation in Kailua, Hawaii, and spoke with officials from the Department of Homeland Security. The White House said that Obama was actively monitoring the situation, and had instructed that all appropriate measures be taken. The White House called the attack an act of terrorism. However, Attorney General Eric Holder has not declared the incident an official terrorist act. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano was also briefed, and was monitoring the incident and initially stated that "the system had worked" in preventing the attack. Several days after the incident, however, she stated, in an attempt to correct this quote, that the system had in fact "failed miserably." According to Napalitano, her initial statement had referred to the response to the incident, rather than the security failures that allowed it to happen. The day after the attack, members of the U.S. Congress pledged to hold hearings to investigate how the device passed through security and whether further restrictions should be placed on air travel. The House Homeland Security Committee and Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee both announced that they would hold hearings in January 2010.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that the UK would take "whatever action was necessary" in response to the attack. The day after the incident, British police sealed off Mansfield Street, in Marylebone, London, where the suspect reportedly lived in a family-owned flat.

The incident raised concern regarding security procedures at Nigeria's major international airports in Lagos and Abuja, where tests for explosive materials are not conducted on carry-on baggage and shoes, and where bags are allowed to pass quickly through x-ray scanners.

Deputy Prime Minister Wouter Bos called Schuringa, a resident of Amsterdam born in 1971 who is a film director of low-budget Dutch films for an Amsterdam media company, and is credited as the assistant director for National Lampoon's Teed Off Two. on behalf of the Dutch government, conveying compliments and gratitude for his part in overpowering the suspect. Dutch Member of Parliament Geert Wilders called Schuringa "a national hero" for his actions, and said that "he deserves a royal honor", which Wilders said he would ask the Dutch government to award.

A police spokeswoman at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol declined to comment about security procedures at the airport, where large numbers of passengers are processed en-route to North America from Africa. A Dutch military police spokesperson said that Abdulmutallab did not go through passport control, and the Dutch counter-terrorism agency NCTb said that it had started a probe into where the suspect originated. A preliminary investigation, however, found no security lapses, and despite being listed as having a potential terrorism connection, the suspect had a valid US visa.

Members of the Second Chamber (Lower House) of the Dutch parliament demanded an explanation from Minister of Justice Hirsch Ballin, given that the plane that took off from The Netherlands, asking especially how the suspect managed to smuggle explosives on board, despite the reportedly strict security measures at Schiphol Airport.

Delta Air Lines, which owns Northwest, said that its Detroit group did not handle security for the flight, and released a statement calling the incident a "disturbance," and saying that Delta was "cooperating fully with authorities".

Criminal charges

On December 26, a criminal complaint was filed against Abdulmutallab in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan by Theodore James Peisig or Peissig, an FBI special agent, charging Abdulmutallab with placing a destructive device in proximity to and attempting to destroy a US civil aircraft. The U.S. Attorney's Office assigned federal prosecutors Jonathan Tukel, chief of the counter-terrorism unit, and Eric Straus, former chief of the same unit, to the case. Abdulmutallab was arraigned later the same day at the University of Michigan Hospital burn unit. He was officially charged by U.S. District Court Judge Paul D. Borman in a hospital conference room. Based upon these charges, Abdulmutallab faces up to 20 years in prison, and a $250,000 fine.

Borman set a detention hearing for January 8, 2010. Abdulmutallab was assigned public defenders Miriam Seifer and Jill Price.

Aftermath

Effect on travel

The US government did not raise the Homeland Security Advisory System terrorist threat level, orange at the time (high risk of terrorist attacks), following the attack. However, the Department of Homeland Security said that additional security measures would be in place for the remainder of the Christmas travel period. The TSA detailed several of the measures, including the restriction of movement and access to personal items during the last hour of flight for all planes within US airspace. The TSA also said that travelers would see more officers and dogs around airports.

British Airways said that passengers flying to the US would only be permitted one carry-on item. Other European countries increased baggage screening, pat-down searches, and random searches for all passengers traveling to the US. A spokesperson for the Dutch airport used by the attacker said that heightened security would be in place for "an indefinite period". On December 28 it was announced that passengers flying to the U.S. from Canada would not be allowed a carry-on bag, with some exceptions, including purses and musical instruments.

December 27 incident

On December 27, 2009, another incident occured during Flight 253, when the crew requested emergency assistance with a Nigerian passenger who had become "verbally disruptive". The crew questioned the passenger after other passengers expressed concern that he had been in the bathroom for over an hour. It was later found that the man was a businessman and had fallen ill, suffering from food poisoning, during the flight. A law enforcement official said the man posed no security risk to the plane. President Obama was notified of this second incident as well.

See also

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• 2001 shoe bomb plot
• List of accidents and incidents on commercial airliners
• List of terrorist incidents, 2009

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External links

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• Delta Air Lines Issues Statement on Northwest Flight 253—Delta Air Lines
• TSA and DHS Statements on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 - Transportation Security Administration
• Statement by Department of Homeland Security Press Secretary Sara Kuban—Dept. of Homeland Security Press Release, Dec. 25, 2009
• Complaint affidavit for United States of America v. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab
• - Registered Flighpath of NWA 253 Dec. 25, 2009

• 2009 crimes in the United States
• Accidents and incidents involving the Airbus A330
• Accidents and incidents on commercial airliners in the United States
• Aviation accidents and incidents in the United States in 2009
• Delta Air Lines flights
• Failed airliner bombings
• Islamist terrorism in the United States
• Suicide bombings in the United States
• Terrorist incidents in 2009
• Terrorist incidents in the United States