DETROIT — A Nigerian man charged with trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas 2009 told authorities in the hours after the attack that he was working for al-Qaeda and offered details of his “mission, training and radicalization,” prosecutors said in court documents filed Friday.
In a 20-page filing seeking a judge’s permission to use the statements as evidence at the fall terrorism trial, the government said Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab made incriminating statements to U.S. customs agents at the plane and to FBI agents a few hours later at the University of Michigan hospital, where he was being treated for severe burns.
U.S. officials in Washington have long said they thought Abdulmutallab was working for al-Qaeda, but the court filing was the first time prosecutors in Detroit publicly said he confessed to it.
