More facts have emerged on the aborted terrorist attack on a Northwest Airline’s Airbus A330 airplane conveying 278 passengers from Amsterdam to Detroit in the United States of America by a Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

Briefing aviation correspondents Saturday night, the Director General and Chief Executive of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, Dr Harold Demuren explained that 23-year old Abdulmutallab purchased an electronic ticket from the KLM Airport office in Accra on December 16, 2009 and was paid for in cash at the cost of $2,831.

The original routing was Lagos-Amsterdam-Detroit-Amsterdam-Accra, but was later changed to Lagos-Amsterdam-Detroit-Amsterdam-Lagos on the same day as confirmed by KLM Lagos office. The return journey was booked for January 8, 2010 out Detroit to arrive Lagos on January 9, 2010.

The NCAA boss further revealed that no contact address or telephone numbers was given by the purchaser of the ticket by the time of purchase.
Demuren went ahead to explain that Abdulmutallab personally checked-in at 20:35 local time, stressing that the same fact was corroborated by the Closed Circuit Television footage.

“The passenger did not check-in any baggage but was spotted with a shoulder bag and went through normal screening. His passport was scanned, his USA Visa was also scanned and the Advanced Passenger Information System (APIS) returned with no objection. He was allotted seat no 20B on the Lagos-Amsterdam leg and seat no 19A on the Amsterdam-Detroit leg.”
Demuren said Abdulmutallab possessed a Machine Readable Passport (MRP) which is the old type of passport that and was issued on September 15, 2005 and was to expire September 14, 2010. His passport no is A3921640[b] and has a USA multiple entry visa issued in London on the 16th of June 2008 to expire 12th June 2010.[/b]

“The passenger presented himself for immigrations clearance with same passport (MRP) and it was scanned into the passenger registration system confirming that he went through normal standard security screening procedure”, he stated.
Demuren further pointed out that the passenger also went through aviation security comprising the walk-through metal detector and baggage x-ray screening machine.

He eventually boarded after secondary screening by KLM officials and at the time of departure, he was confirmed on board with serial number 2 on the manifest.
The NCAA Chief also assured that the nation’s aviation officials are willing to cooperate with relevant bodies to unravel the circumstances surrounding the incident.
He said the investigation is ongoing, stressing that the issue deserves all efforts to addressing it.

http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/news/national/2009/dec/27/national-27-12-2009-00-006.htm

allaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah akbar!

what continues to baffle me is how this dude passed our nations airport security with that explosive without being detected and even schipol airport in amsterdam which i have been there before. schipol airport is known to have one of the tighest security checks in europe since after 9/11. could there have been a security blunder or some kind of conspiracy? well i guess its a question left for the dutch and nigerian immigration to answer.