Posted on 12/31/2009 12:23:57 PM PST by UAConservative
SANA, Yemen — Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man accused of trying to bomb an airplane last week, already spoke fluent Arabic by the time he arrived here in Yemen for classes last summer, impressing his instructors with his command of the language he had supposedly come to improve.
Then, after six weeks in and out of class, the school got him an exit visa, and on Sept. 21 even arranged for a car that took Mr. Abdulmutallab to the airport, the director said.
“After that we never saw him again, and apparently he did not leave Yemen,” the director, Muhammed al-Anisi, said. “We heard later that he may have gone to Hadramawt,” the poor eastern province where Al Qaeda is strong, and from where Osama bin Laden’s father left poverty to make his fortune in Saudi Arabia.
In retrospect, Mr. Anisi suspects, Mr. Abdulmutallab simply used the school as a formal pretext to legally re-enter Yemen last summer after being recruited elsewhere by Al Qaeda.
“I do wonder if the school was an excuse,” he said, noting that Mr. Abdulmutallab remained in Yemen after his visa expired, disappearing into Yemen’s Qaeda training grounds and emerging on Christmas Day to try to blow up a packed airplane heading to Detroit. When he left Yemen in December, the authorities here acknowledge, no one stopped Mr. Abdulmutallab for overstaying his visa.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I also notice that the PC NYT doesn't identify him as an "Islamic extremist" or "muslim extremist"; they identify him as "Nigerian".
Going to Yemen during the summer for classes...
yeah, in the summer, that is where I would want to be...
136°F ping
Don’t all Nigerians speak fluent Arabic? It must be a very handy language to have in Nigeria. I’m sure it has nothing to do with Islam, Jihad or reading the Koran.
I know! It's definitely superior to English, Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba. Word on the street is you have to go to the eastern provinces of Yemen to learn it.
I shall wave at you across the Arabian Gulf. :)
Would want to be, again
Yemen is one of those "once was enough for me" kind of places.
I remember the severe feeling of depression after I was back in the states for an R&R, then returning as the plane was taking off. I was just stunned I was actually willing to go back. It got easier after time, like most prostitution...
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