Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Flight 253 terror suspect Abdulmutallab is working with the FBI, official says

By TODD SPANGLER The terrorism defendant in the Christmas Day attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound airplane is cooperating with FBI agents, a law enforcement official said today.

Nigerian national Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, being held in federal prison in Milan on charges that could lock him up for life, has talked more than once with the FBI in the past week, the person said.

He has provided information that has been followed up on both in the U.S. and overseas, the law enforcement official said.

Abdulmutallab is accused of trying to ignite explosives packed into his underwear as a Delta flight from Amsterdam neared Detroit. He was subdued by passengers and crew.

The development that only ratcheted up the debate over whether Abdulmutallab should be tried in federal court or before a military tribunal.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, confirmed that the young Nigerian operative has changed his mind and is speaking to federal agents again. He earlier talked to agents for about 50 minutes on the day of his arrest, and then refused to cooperate further. Agents then advised of him of his Miranda rights against self-incrimination, and he stopped talking altogether.

“My understanding is that he is cooperating,” she said, “that they have gotten useful information out of him. My information is that is continuing” since he was given the Miranda warning upon his arrest on Christmas Day.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III also confirmed that Abdulmutallab was talking again.

The issue of the suspect’s cooperation has become a lightning rod in Washington, as Obama administration officials insisted they had gotten as much intelligence as they were going to get from Abdulmutallab, a member of the Yemen branch of al-Qaida.

Republicans on Capitol Hill, who want Abdulmutallab and all other terror suspects to be confined and tried by military authorities at the U.S. Naval Base on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, say the fact that he is saying more to authorities shows that he never should have been Mirandized and instead shipped off to Cuba for in-depth, secret interrogations.

“There is a life span on this kind of intelligence,” said one Republican source on Capitol Hill. “If you know the location of an operative one day, and al-Qaida knows you are captured, how likely is it the operative is still in the same place the next day, let alone more than a month after?

“And this seems to contradict claims from the administration that they’ve gotten all the information they needed out of him. If that was so, then the bomber wouldn’t have anything more to talk about.”

Also today, a bipartisan group of senators announced legislation to stop funding for the any civilian trials of terror suspects, including the alleged Sept. 11 plotters whom the administration has wanted to try in New York City. The senators want them tried instead before a military commission in Cuba.

But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the previous Bush administration tried more than 300 terror defendants in federal courts, while only three were prosecuted in military tribunals.

“We’re all, Democrats and Republicans, committed to keeping America safe,” Reid said. “We just have different ways of doing it.”

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