Father of Nigerian terror suspect sought government help to no avail before airline attack

Terror suspect’s family sought, got no help

LAGOS, Nigeria — The Nigerian man accused of trying to bomb a U.S. airliner cut off all ties with his relatives until they awoke to news of the attempted Christmas Day attack, the family said Monday.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s father first reached out to Nigerian security agencies two months ago and a month later to foreign security agencies about his concerns that his son had disappeared and ceased contact with the family, the family said in a statement. U.S. authorities said that in November, Abdulmutallab’s father visited the U.S. embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, to discuss his concerns about his son’s religious beliefs.

Abdulmutallab told U.S. officials who arrested him on the Detroit-bound airliner that he had sought extremist training at an Islamist hotbed in Yemen.

The family said the father had gone to authorities to ask them to bring his 23-year-old son home. “We provided them with all the information required of us to enable them do this,” the family statement said, without elaborating.

Adding another piece to the puzzle of what Abdulmutallab had been doing over recent months, a university campus in Dubai said the young man had been attending the school from January through the middle of this year.

University of Wollongong in Dubai Vice President Raymi van der Spek told The Associated Press Monday that Abdulmutallab took classes for “about seven months” and is no longer a student at the branch of an Australian public university.

On Dec. 24, Nigerian officials say Abdulmutallab re-entered Nigeria for only one day to board a flight in Lagos, where he walked through airport security carrying only a shoulder bag, with explosives hidden on his body.

Abdulmutallab is being held in a federal prison in Michigan after suffering burns in the botched bombing. U.S. authorities have said he claimed to be carrying out an attack on orders from al-Qaida.

Abdulmutallab’s father, prominent banker Umaru Abdulmutallab, previously said he thought his son traveled to Yemen before the attack.

A Nigerian police spokesman declined to comment, while officials with Nigeria’s State Security Service could not be reached for comment Monday. A spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, said he had no information on the father’s efforts.

A U.S. official in Washington said the father’s concerns were shared among those in the embassy, including liaison personnel from other agencies based there, such as the FBI. The alert was then relayed to Washington and again shared among agencies such as the State, Justice and Homeland Security departments, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the investigation.

Abdulmutallab attended a British preparatory school in Togo and graduated from University College London before apparently severing ties with his family.

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Associated Press writer Adam Schreck contributed to this report from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.