Foiled Bomber Turned Radical at UK College

Abdulmutallab helped organize 'War on Terror' conference in London
By Will McCahill,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 29, 2009 7:28 PM CST
Foiled Bomber Turned Radical at UK College
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.   (IntelCenter)

The suspect in the foiled Christmas airliner bombing found radical Islam while in college in London, becoming president of the school’s Islamic society. Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab helped organize “War on Terror Week,” the Times reports, bringing in human-rights lawyers and former Guantanamo Bay detainees as speakers for such programs as “Jihad v Terrorism … a lecture on the Islamic position with respect to jihad.”

As security officials fill in the picture of Abdulmutallab, now 23, sources say it’s likely al-Qaeda recruited him during his time at University College London. That school has a patchy record in facing up to the problem” of radical Islam, as do many others in the capital.
(More Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab stories.)

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