Mutallab ‘not radicalized at UK University’

Umar Faruk Mutallab, accused of trying to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner was not radicalised during his days as a student in Britain, a report on Friday said, challenging suggestions he was recruited on campus.

Earlier in September, Nigeria and Saudi-based cleric, Dr. Ahmed Gumi who has counseled Mutallab against radical Islam told Weekly Trust that he tried to dissuade him from going to Yemen, the country where Mutallab is believed to have come in contact with al Qaeda, the masterminds of the botched Christmas Day bombing attempt when he migrated there to acquire religious knowledge.

Gumi said: “It was just unfortunate that the chap got misguided by extremist groups.”

The attack on Christmas Day 2009 stirred fears that a new generation of UK militants had emerged through private networks and campus debating societies rather than high-profile mosques.

The study by a panel established by University College London (UCL) found that conditions at the university were not to blame for the radicalisation of former student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, charged with trying to down a flight from Amsterdam as it approached Detroit.

Rshad al-Alimi, Yemen’s Deputy Prime Minister for Defence and Security, said on January 7 Abdulmutallab had been recruited by al Qaeda in Britain, where he studied from 2005-08 at UCL and became president of the student Islamic Society.

And media reports suggested British security services had known three years earlier that he had been “reaching out” to extremists and had passed a file to their U.S. counterparts on Abdulmutallab’s activities while he was a student at UCL.

However the review by the panel, made of figures from outside UCL whom the university described as independent, said:

“In the light of the investigations it has carried out, the panel concludes that there is no evidence to suggest either that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was radicalised while a student at UCL or that conditions at UCL during that time or subsequently are conducive to the radicalisation of students.”