SAN’A, Yemen — The Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a U.S. passenger plane on Christmas met in a remote mountainous area of Yemen with regional al-Qaida leaders, possibly including a radical American cleric who also was in contact with the alleged Fort Hood shooter, Yemen’s deputy prime minister said today.
However, Rashad al-Alimi insisted that 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was recruited by al-Qaida in Britain, before he arrived in Yemen last summer, and that he obtained the explosives used in the failed attack after he left Yemen.
Al-Alimi, the deputy prime minister in charge of defense and security, offered his government’s most detailed account yet of Abdulmutallab’s activities in the months leading up to his failed attack. He disappeared in Yemen for weeks before leaving the country on Dec. 4.
Al-Alimi said Abdulmutallab met with al-Qaida members in Rafad, a region tucked into an imposing wall of high mountains some 200 miles southeast of the capital. The sparsely populated region of craggy, desert peaks creased with valleys is in Shabwa province.
Among those he may have met with there was the U.S.-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.
“There is no doubt that he met and had contacts with al-Qaida elements in Shabwa, … perhaps with al-Awlaki,” al-Alimi told reporters. “I believe this place is indeed associated with Anwar al-Awlaki.”
The Awlak tribe, to which the cleric belongs, dominates much of the area.
A day before the Christmas bombing attempt, Yemeni warplanes, backed by U.S. intelligence, struck the same location. The Dec. 24 strike targeted a gathering of al-Qaida leaders, possibly including al-Awlaki as well as the head of al-Qaida’s offshoot in Yemen and his deputy, al-Alimi said. They are believed to have survived, but Yemeni officials say at least 30 militants were killed.
Al-Alimi said the site was “the same one where the Nigerian met with al-Qaida elements.”
The cleric al-Awlaki is a popular figure among al-Qaida sympathizers, known for his English-language sermons preaching jihad, or holy war, against the West.
Al-Awlaki has been linked to U.S. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged gunman in the Nov. 5 mass shooting at the Fort Hood, Texas, Army post in which 13 people were killed. Months earlier, al-Awlaki exchanged dozens of e-mails with the accused shooter, and al-Awlaki later praised the attack.
Last week, President Barack Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, said al-Awlaki is “clearly a part of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. He’s not just a cleric. He is in fact trying to instigate terrorism.”
Abdulmutallab is accused of trying to set off explosives hidden in his underwear while on an airliner bound for Detroit on Christmas Day. But the explosives didn’t go off, burning him instead as other passengers wrestled him to the ground. He has since told U.S. investigators he received the explosives and was trained in their use by al-Qaida members in Yemen, according to American officials.
He first came to Yemen in 2004 and stayed for a year to study Arabic at a Sana’a school. He then moved to Britain, where he lived until 2008. He returned to Yemen in August, ostensibly to study Arabic at the same school. But he disappeared in September until he left the country on Dec. 4.
Al-Alimi insisted that Yemen’s investigations have shown that during Abdulmutallab’s first stint in Yemen, “he did not have any tendency or behavior indicating extremist ideas.
“During the period he was living in Britain, I believe he was recruited by radical groups in Britain,” he said.
Al-Alimi also said Abdulmutallab received his explosives in Nigeria, disputing the U.S. accounts that al-Qaida elements in Yemen gave them to him.
Yemeni security forces have arrested a number of al-Qaida members who had contact with Abdulmutallab, the deputy prime minister said, without identifying them.
“We are pursing many of many of these elements that are connected to this subject. Some of these elements have been killed, others have been arrested and are being investigated. We will announce the results of these investigations later.”
A midlevel al-Qaida leader who was confirmed killed in the Dec. 24 strike, Mohammed Ahmed Saleh Omair, had also met with Abdulmutallab earlier, al-Alimi said.
Al-Alimi said along with al-Awlaki, the leader of al-Qaida’s offshoot in Yemen, Naser Abdel Karim al-Wahishi, and his deputy Saeed al-Shihri, were believed to have been at the Rafad meeting hit in the strike.
Al-Wahishi and al-Shihri, “were both there an hour before the operation,” he said. But he said, “I cannot confirm if Naser al-Wahishi and Saeed al-Shihri are still alive.”
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