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Northwest Airlines Flight 253

A Northwest Airbus A330 with Delta Air Lines livery, similar to the one involved in the Flight 253 incident
Date	December 25, 2009
Summary	Attempted terrorist attack, 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 A330-323E
Operator	Northwest Airlines
Registration	N820NWdisaster
Flight origin	Amsterdam Airport Schiphol
Destination	Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport
Passengers	278
Crew	11
Fatalities	0
Injuries	3
Survivors	289 (all)

The Northwest Airlines Flight 253 bombing attempt (or the Christmas Day bombing attempt) was a failed terrorist attempt to blow up a transatlantic flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, Michigan, on Christmas Day, December 25, 2009.

Two passengers were injured, in addition to the suspected bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The suspect was taken into custody and later 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 Christmas Eve, December 24, 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian man, arrived at Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos, Nigeria. His $2,831 Lagos-Amsterdam-Detroit round-trip-ticket had been purchased with cash eight days earlier at the KLM office in Accra, Ghana, with a January 8, 2010, return date. He left Lagos that evening at 11 pm aboard KLM Flight 588, a Boeing 777 bound for Schiphol Airport (AMS) in Amsterdam.

In Amsterdam, he may have been able to check in without a passport with the help of an unknown "well dressed" man, who reportedly asked airline employees at Schiphol if Abdulmutallab could board Flight 253 without a passport, and suggested Abdulmutallab was a "refugee from Sudan". He left Amsterdam around 8:45 am local time on a Northwest Airlines Airbus A330-300 twinjet, with 279 passengers, 8 flight attendants, and 3 pilots aboard. The plane was scheduled to arrive in Detroit at 11:40 am EST, and was painted in Delta Air Lines' livery, as Northwest is a wholly owned subsidiary of Delta.

Witnesses reported that as the plane approached Detroit a passenger, later identified as Abdulmutallab, went into the plane's bathroom for about 20 minutes. After returning to his seat at 19A (near the fuel tanks and wing, and against the skin of the plane) he 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 plastic explosive powder and liquid acid. He apparently had a packet of the plastic explosive sewn to his underwear, and used a syringe containing liquid acid 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 plastic explosive.

There were not any air marshals on the flight. Several passengers and crew noticed the attack. A Dutch passenger, Jasper Schuringa, ran forward and tackled and overpowered the suspect. Schuringa saw the suspect's trousers 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," said Schuringa, who suffered burns to his hands. Meanwhile, flight attendants extinguished the fire with a fire extinguisher and blankets, and a passenger removed the partially melted, 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 pm local time. The airport is about 20 miles southwest of Detroit and the adjacent international border.

Nick Rapagna, the secretary treasurer of the Canadian division of the Airline Pilots Association, said that the crew members decided to land in Detroit because the aircraft was in the process of descending for a landing in Detroit, where a Northwest crew base and Northwest infrastructure were located. Kevin Psutka, president of the Canadian Owners and Pilots Association, opined that many airports in southern Ontario would have had difficulty accepting an aircraft the size of the Airbus A330, and that if the plane had landed in Canada, the crew would have had to go to "Toronto or maybe London, Ontario."

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 U.S. Customs 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; 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 that the suspect tried to detonate was reportedly more than Template:G to oz of pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), a crystaline powder that is often the active ingredient of plastic explosives. It is among the most powerful of explosives, in the same chemical family as nitroglycerin. The powder 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. The suspect apparently carried the PETN onto the plane in a six-inch-long soft plastic container, possibly a condom, attached to his underwear. However, much of the container was lost in the fire. ABC News cited a government test indicating that Template:G to oz of PETN can blow a hole in the side of an airliner, and posted photos of the remains of Abdulmutallab's underwear and syringe.

Al-Qaeda member Richard Reid (the "Shoe Bomber") tried to detonate 50 grams of the same explosive in his shoes during an American Airlines flight in December 2001. The attack was near the eighth anniversary of Reid's attempt. In August 2009, with PETN hidden in the anal cavity, an al-Qaeda bomber from Yemen blew himself up near the Saudi deputy Interior Minister in charge of counter-terrorism, Prince Muhammad bin Nayef.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab

The suspect is Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. He is the youngest of 16 children of Alhaji Umaru Mutallab (one of the richest men in Africa—and the prominent former Nigerian Federal Commissioner for Economic Development, and Chairman of First Bank of Nigeria), and the son of the second of his father's two wives (who is from Yemen). 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. He visited the U.S. for the first time in 2004, and was also in Yemen for a year from 2004-05, spending at least some of the time studying at the San'a Institute for the Arabic Language in Sana'a. He began his studies at University College London in September 2005, where he was president of the Islamic Society in 2006 and 2007, and where he studied Engineering with Business Finance and 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.

On June 12, 2008, Abdulmutallab applied for and received from the US consulate in London a US multiple-entry visa, valid to June 12, 2010, with which he visited Houston, Texas, from August 1–17, 2008.

From January until July 2009, he attended a master's of international business degree program at University of Wollongong in Dubai.

In May 2009 he tried to return to Britain, ostensibly 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 UK security list, which BBC News said meant he could not come into the UK, though he could pass through the country in transit and was not permanently banned.

His father agreed in July 2009 to his request to study Arabic at the San'a Institute for the Arabic Language in Yemen from August to December 2009, though he apparently left the Institute after a month. 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.

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. It was not added, however, 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.

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 a federal prison in Milan, Michigan.

Possible motive

A number of sources reported ties between Abdulmutallab and Anwar al-Awlaki, a Muslim lecturer and spiritual leader who has been accused of being a senior al-Qaeda recruiter and motivator linked to various terrorists. Al-Awlaki, previously an imam in the U.S. who more recently lived in Yemen, also has links to three of the 9/11 hijackers, the suspected Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan, a plot to attack Fort Dix, and a Toronto terror cell. In addition, al-Awlaki regularly addresses British university Islamic groups by video links, and spoke to a forum at the East London Mosque; his videos, which discuss his Islamist theories, have circulated in England.

Representative Pete Hoekstra, the senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said officials in the Obama administration and officials with access to law enforcement information told him the suspect "may have been in contact with ... al-Awlaki." He continued: "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 U.S. again."

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, Hoekstra said that credible sources told him the suspect "most likely" has ties with al-Awlaki.

Similarly, Fox News reported that Sky News sources said the suspect had links with al-Awlaki. University of Oxford historian, and professor of international relations, Mark Almond wrote on December 27 that the suspect was "on American security watch-lists because of his links with ... Al-Awlaki".

The Times reported on December 28 that there were "informed reports" that Abdulmutallab met al-Awlaki during his final weeks of training and indoctrination prior to 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 followed Awlaki's blog and website. On December 29, The Independent also reported that he was in contact with al-Awlaki.

CBS News reported on December 29 that Abdulmutallab apparently was at a talk by al-Awlaki at a London mosque (which al-Awlaki may have attended by video teleconference), and that investigators are exploring whether al-Awlaki played a role in preparing Abdulmutallab for martyrdom, or had an actual role in Abdulmutallab's attack. On December 30 the Washington Post reported that according to federal sources, over the past year Abdulmutallab intensified electronic communications with al-Awlaki.

According to a press report published on December 30, on the website of the New York Times, the U.S. intelligence were informed already before the attempt actually took place.

Al-Qaeda involvement

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) indicated that it was responsible for the attack, and said that the attack during "their (Christians) celebration of the Christmas holidays" was to "avenge US attacks on the militants in Yemen". The NEFA Foundation posted Al Qaeda's statement.

While in custody, Abdulmutallab told authorities he had been directed by al-Qaeda, and that he had 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. He said he had contacted al-Qaeda through a radical Yemeni imam (who according to The New York Times on December 26 was not believed to be al-Awlaki) whom he had reached through the internet. The New York Times reported on December 25 that a counter-terrorism official had told them 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.

Reactions and investigations

The U.S. investigation into the incident is being managed by the FBI. It was not immediately known how the suspect managed to smuggle the explosives 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. Representative Hoekstra said that Detroit in particular may not have specifically been singled out for the attack, but rather that the focus may have simply been to attack a destination with many international travelers. In addition, it was suggested that it is possible that the attack was a test to see if such materials could pass through screening, and how much damage the blast would cause.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that the UK would take "whatever action was necessary" in response to the attempted bombing. The day after the attack, British police sealed off Mansfield Street, in Marylebone, London, where the suspect had 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.

Dutch Deputy Prime Minister Wouter Bos phoned Schuringa, an Amsterdam resident 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 Too, on behalf of the Dutch government. He conveyed its compliments and gratitude for Schuringa's part in overpowering the suspect. Dutch Member of Parliament Geert Wilders, known for his anti-Islamic views, called Schuringa "a national hero" who "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, 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 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 and officially charged by U.S. District Court Judge Paul D. Borman later the same day at the University of Michigan Hospital. 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, and 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 a restriction on movement and access to personal items during the last hour of flight for all planes entering US airspace. The TSA also said that there would be more officers and security dogs at 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 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 Transport Canada announced that for several days it will not allow passengers flying to the U.S. from Canada a carry-on bag, with some exceptions (including small purses, laptop computers, and musical instruments).

On December 27, a Lufthansa flight headed for Detroit was diverted to Iceland when it was discovered to be carrying a bag from a passenger who was not on the plane. In addition, a passenger on another flight (Baltimore to New York) was detained when a firecracker was discovered in the seat he had used.

Political fallout

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and Napolitano initially said that "the system had worked" in preventing the attack. Several days later, however, they retracted the statement, saying that the system had in fact "failed miserably." According to Napolitano, her initial statement had referred to the passenger response to the attack, rather than the security failures that allowed the attack to happen. On December 29, four days after the attack, Obama issued a statement criticizing the failures in the security system that allowed explosives to enter the plane, calling the situation "totally unacceptable," and calling for flaws to be fixed immediately. The day after the attack, the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee and Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee both announced that they would hold hearings in January 2010 to investigate how the device passed through security, and whether further restrictions should be placed on air travel.

December 27 incident

On December 27, 2009, another incident occured aboard 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 determined that the man was a businessman who had fallen ill from food poisoning during the flight. A law enforcement official said the man did not pose any security risk to the plane.

See also

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• 2001 shoe bomb plot
• 2006 Transatlantic Aircraft Plot
• List of accidents and incidents on commercial airliners
• List of terrorist incidents, 2009

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External links

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• Registered Flight-path of NWA 253, December 25, 2009
• Criminal Complaint and Affidavit for U.S. v. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, December 25, 2009
• Statement by Department of Homeland Security Press Secretary Sara Kuban, Department of Homeland Security, December 25, 2009
• Delta Air Lines Issues Statement on Northwest Flight 253, Delta Air Lines, December 25, 2009
• TSA and DHS Statements on Northwest Airlines Flight 253, Transportation Security Administration, December 26, 2009
• Transcript, Audio, Video of President Obama's First Press Conference on Flight 253 Terrorist Attempt

• 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