WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – The United States is investigating whether al Qaeda was involved in a Christmas Day attempt to blow up a passenger jet, but there is no early evidence the Nigerian suspect in the case was part of a larger plot, the U.S. homeland security chief said yesterday.
U.S. authorities on Saturday charged Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, with attempting to blow up a Northwest Airlines plane as it approached Detroit on a flight from Amsterdam with almost 300 people on board.
Asked whether al Qaeda was involved, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told ABC’s “This Week” program, “That is now the subject of investigation, and it would be inappropriate for me to say and inappropriate to speculate.”
A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Saturday authorities were looking at the possibility that Abdulmutallab had ties to al Qaeda in Yemen.
“Right now, we have no indication that it is part of anything larger,” Napolitano told CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Yesterday, the crew of that same Amsterdam to Detroit flight reported an emergency incident because of an unruly passenger. The plane landed safely and a Nigerian man was taken into FBI custody. The man had raised concerns because he spent an unusually long time in the plane’s bathroom, but it turned out he had a “legitimate illness,” the Department of Homeland Security officials said.
President Barack Obama, on vacation in Hawaii, stressed the importance of maintaining heightened security for air travel, the White House said after yesterday’s short-lived scare.