Washington, Dec 27 (IANS) A 23-year-old Nigerian man charged with trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day is the son of prominent Nigerian banker and had been a college student in Britain before moving to Dubai, media reports said
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab received a college degree at the University College of London, CNN said citing a source who lives at the family home in Kaduna, Nigeria. The news channel cited Dave Weston, a spokesman for the university, as saying a man named Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab was enrolled in the mechanical engineering department between September 2005 and June 2008.

His father, Alhaji Umar Mutallab, recently retired as chairman of First Bank PLC, one of the Nigeria’s premier banks, said the source, who lives at the family home in Kaduna, Nigeria.

Abdulmutallab went to Dubai to study for a second degree, the family source told CNN, but contacted his family to say he was moving to Yemen, implying that he was leaving “for the course of Islam.”

It was after this communication that his father contacted security services and the US embassy in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, to warn that he feared his son might intend to participate in “some kind of jihad,” the family source said. The family member said Abdulmutallab “had no family consent or support” and that he “absconded to Yemen.” “His mother has not been sleeping for months. She is on medication to sleep,” the source said.

The banker’s information about his son was forwarded to the National Counter-Terrorism Center, and the son was added to a general watch list, a data base of suspected terrorists. But the official said “the info on him was not deemed specific enough to pull his visa or put him on a no-fly list.”

Abdulmutallab’s last known London address was a basement apartment in a wealthy neighbourhood, CNN said. On Saturday, counterterrorism police officers police went in and out of an ornate building on Mansfield Street where Abdulmutallab apparently lived.

Abdulmutallab was granted a multiple-year, multiple-entry tourist visa at the US embassy in London in June 2008, CNN said citing a senior US administration official familiar with the case.

At the time, there was “no derogatory information that would have prevented him from getting a visa,” said the official cited by CNN.