Bomb suspect had Qaeda links

Federal authorities charged a 23-year-old Nigerian man with trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day, and officials said the suspect told them he had obtained explosive chemicals and a syringe that were sewn into his underwear from a bomb expert in Yemen associated with al-Qaeda.

Federal authorities charged a 23-year-old Nigerian man with trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day, and officials said the suspect told them he had obtained explosive chemicals and a syringe that were sewn into his underwear from a bomb expert in Yemen associated with al-Qaeda.

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The authorities have not independently corroborated the Yemen connection claimed by the man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was burned in his failed attempt to bring down the airliner and is in a hospital in Michigan.

But a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation said on Saturday that the suspect’s account was “plausible,” and that he saw “no reason to discount it.”

Abdulmutallab’s name was not unknown to American authorities. His father, a prominent Nigerian banker, recently told officials at the United States Embassy in Nigeria that he was concerned about his son’s increasingly extremist religious views.

As a result of his father’s warning, federal authorities in Washington opened an investigative file and Abdulmutallab’s name ended up in the American intelligence community’s central repository of information on known or suspected international terrorists.

Members of Congress who were briefed Saturday by governmental officials also pointed to a Yemeni connection.

“The facts are still emerging, but there are strong suggestions of a Yemen-al-Qaeda connection and an intent to blow up the plane over US airspace,” Representative Jane Harman, a California Democrat who leads the House Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence, said in a statement.

The attempt prompted significant changes to airline security around the world during the busy holiday season.