The court heard today dramatic details of how passengers screamed in terror at the young Nigerian accused of attempting to detonate a bomb in his underwear to bring down a jetliner.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Tuckel described Umar Farouk Abdulmattab as an alleged al Qaeda member who calmly attempted to blow up the plane and then sat expressionless while his underwear burned because he had fully accepted his mission of martyrdom.Meanwhile, shocked passengers aboard the Christmas 2009 Northwest Airlines Flight 253 shouted at him, 'Your pants are on fire!'
Accused: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was 'engaging in rituals. He was preparing to die and enter heaven' aboard the Christmas 2009 flight - according to prosecutors today'His mission, his goal, was to blow it up,' Mr Tuckel said during his opening statement at the trial in U.S. District Court. 'It had to be blown up over U.S. soil.''There was a loud pop... smoke... a fireball... the fireball was on the defendant... he was engulfed,' the prosecutor said.
Michael Zantow a passenger aboard the flight who was seated one row away from Abdulmutallab said people were alarmed by the initial loud pop of the device. He said someone yelled, 'Hey man, hey dude, your pants are on fire.'
'This guy’s pants is on fire,' another passenger yelled, according to Zantow.Zantow said that passengers struggled to get Abdulmutallab’s seatbelt off and lifted him out of his seat and laid him down on the floor with his pants down to his knees and the device smoldering.
'It was bulky and they were burning,' Zantow said. 'It looked like my son’s Pampers.'Zantow echoed Tuckel’s statement in his opening arguments that Abdulmutallab sat expressionless as he was enveloped by the flames
Trial: In this courtroom drawing, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab appears in U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds' courtroom in Detroit
'I never saw any reaction at all,' Zantow said about the 24-year-old Nigerian who faces terrorism charges for the attempted bombing and conspiracy allegedly organized by Al Qaeda.Abdulmutallab made numerous trips to the bathroom and prayed and went through rituals before allegedly depressing a plunger on a syringe, setting off a chemical reaction of two high explosives, Tuckel said.In the plane's bathroom, 'he was engaging in rituals.
He was preparing to die and enter heaven,' Tukel said.'He purified himself. He washed. He brushed his teeth. He put on perfume. He was praying and perfuming himself to get ready to die.'After returning to his seat, Abdulmutallab pushed a small plunger on the chemical bomb in his underwear, an action that produced the 'pop,' the prosecutor told jurors.
The bomb didn't work as planned but Abdulmutallab was engulfed in flames, said Tukel, who displayed the flight's seating chart on a screen to show jurors where things happened on the plane.Abdulmutallab, whose handcuff were removed before the jury was seated, sat quietly watching the proceedings wearing a gray and yellow dashiki and a skullcap. Read more>>
SOURCE/ Daily mail
