US/Yemen - plane bomber

Obama demands explanations for security failure

Article published on the 2009-12-30 Latest update 2009-12-30 14:49 TU

Obama speaks at the Marine Corps Base Hawaii in Kaneohe, Hawaii
(Photo: Reuters)

US President Barack Obama has blamed " a systematic failure" of intelligence for allowing Nigerian would-be bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board the plane he tried to blow up on Christmas Day. And the US and Yemen are reported to be planning reprisal attacks on Al-Qaeda targets.

Obama has demanded an explanation after learning that US security agents had prior information which might have led to the attack being averted.

The President has ordered two reviews into the failed Christmas Day attack. One into the no-fly list system and another into how Abdulmutallab managed to board the plane in Amsterdam.

Latest reports say that US agents had reports that a Nigerian was being trained in Yemen for an attack on the US several weeks before the bombing attempt.

Congress has still not acted on all the advice from a commission on the attacks of 11 September. Only half of baggage loaded onto planes is screened and airports still have no reliable equipment to detect explosives.

The Netherlands has announced it is to install body scans on all passengers flying to the US from its territory within the next three weeks.

The Dutch government said that the attempt was professionally planned but amateurishly executed. But it admitted that Abdulmutallab passed through a metal detector and bag search without the explosives hidden on his body being found.

The US and Yemen are preparing for strikes against Al-Qaeda targets in Yemen, after the network announced that it was behind the attack, according to CNN television.

"US special operations forces and intelligence agencies, and their Yemeni counterparts, are working to identify potential Al-Qaeda targets in Yemen," the report cited one US source as saying.

“President Obama is much more feared than was his predecessor because every step taken since his election has greatly weakened Al-Qaeda networks, whether from the symbolic, political or operational point of view,” says Paris-based expert Jean-Pierre Filiu.

He says that Al-Qaeda mostly recruits via the internet nowadays, adding that "that is why Jihadi websites are so dangerous and why they should probably be shut down or at least disrupted”.

And, Filiu says, the network has suffered some setbacks.

“You have drawbacks of the organisation that has lost a lot of its operational leaders and that is lacking any strategic vision because it is fighting for its life.”