Accused ‘Underwear Bomber’ Said He Worked for Al-Qaida

A Nigerian man charged with trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas 2009 told authorities after being led off the plane that he was working for al-Qaida and later offered up details of his “mission, training and radicalization,” prosecutors said in court documents filed Friday.

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Abdulmutallab, 24, is accused of trying to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253, which had nearly 300 people on board, seven minutes before arrival at Detroit Metropolitan Airport by igniting explosives hidden in his underwear. He is trying to have his statements thrown out because he had not been read his Miranda rights against self-incrimination.

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Abdulmutallab told U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents about his links to al-Qaida when they met the plane at the gate, the U.S. attorney’s office contends. The officers gave the information to FBI agents who met with Abdulmutallab for 50 minutes at the hospital, more than three hours after the plane had landed. {snip}

“Every question was directly related to identifying any other attackers and preventing another potential attack,” the U.S. attorney’s office wrote. “Defendant answered, providing details of his mission, training and radicalization, including his decision months earlier to become involved in violent jihad.”

Abdulmutallab said he “intended to cause Flight 253 to crash, killing all persons on board,” the government says.

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A handwritten request by Abdulmutallab asks U.S. District Judge Nancy G. Edmunds to free him from federal prison because he “believes that all Muslims should only be ruled by the law of the Quran.”

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In a second handwritten filing from Abdulmutallab on Thursday, he claimed that guards at the federal prison in Milan, Michigan used excessive force to restrain him after he “assaulted several officers” on Wednesday.

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