DETROIT — Calling it a “just punishment,” a federal judge ordered life in prison Thursday for a Nigerian man who turned away from a privileged life and tried to blow up a jet with nearly 300 people aboard during a suicide mission for al-Qaeda.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was the same defiant man who four months ago pleaded guilty to all charges related to the attempted destruction of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 with a bomb sewn into his underwear on Christmas Day 2009. He seemed to relish his mandatory sentence and defended his actions as rooted in the Muslim holy book, the Koran.
Earlier, four passengers and a crew member aboard Flight 253 told U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds that the event forever changed their lives. Abdulmutallab looked disinterested during their remarks — he rarely looked up while seated just a few feet away, wearing a white skull cap and an oversized prison T-shirt.
Abdulmutallab, 25, “has never expressed doubt or regret or remorse about his mission,” Edmunds said. “In contrast, he sees that mission as divinely inspired and a continuing mission.”
Life in prison is a “just punishment for what he has done,” the judge said. “The defendant poses a significant ongoing threat to the safety of American citizens everywhere.”
Abdulmutallab, who was educated in Europe and is the son of a wealthy Nigerian banker, told the government that he trained in Yemen under the eye of Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American-born cleric and one of the best-known al-Qaeda figures.
He tried to detonate the bomb on the Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight, but the device failed and badly burned him. He quickly confessed after he was hauled off the plane.
“Mujahedeen are proud to kill in the name of God. And that is exactly what God told us to do in the Koran. … Today is a day of victory,” Abdulmutallab said in court.
The judge allowed prosecutors to show a video of the FBI demonstrating the power of the explosive material found in his underwear. Abdulmutallab twice said loudly, “Allahu Akbar,” which means “God is great.”
Al-Awlaki and the man who made the bomb were killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen last year, just days before Abdulmutallab’s trial began in October. At the time, President Barack Obama publicly blamed al-Awlaki for the terrorism plot.
The case had lasting implications for security screening at U.S. airports. Abdulmutallab’s ability to defeat security in Amsterdam contributed to the deployment of full-body scanners at U.S. airports.
Defense lawyer Anthony Chambers told the Detroit Free Press that Abdulmutallab probably will serve his sentence at the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colo.
