Airline bomb suspect’s former teacher describes nice, religious pupil; father expresses shock

Bomb suspect’s teacher, family dismayed, shocked

LAGOS, Nigeria — As a member of an uppercrust Nigerian family, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab received the best schooling, from the elite British International School in West Africa to the vaunted University College London.

But the education he sought was of a different sort: Nigerian officials say his interest in extremist Islam prompted his father to warn U.S. authorities. As Abdulmutallab was being escorted in handcuffs off the Detroit-bound airliner he attempted to blow up on Christmas Day, he told U.S. officials that he had sought extremist education at an Islamist hotbed in Yemen.

Friends and family expressed shock Sunday that the 23-year-old they described as friendly, respected and strongly religious would attempt to kill more than 300 people in what he claimed was an al-Qaida-supported plot.

His father, through officials, said he was shocked and regretful. A neighbor in his hometown in northern Nigeria described Abdulmutallab as religious and obedient. A former teacher at his elite West African preparatory school said he was so respected by classmates that they dubbed him “the Pope.” And an engineering classmate at his competitive university said he was quiet and religious.

Nigerian Information Minister Dora Akunyili said Abdulmutallab had sneaked into his own country to catch the flight that would take him to Amsterdam and Detroit. She did not elaborate on how he entered the country.

He was only in Nigeria for one day, she said. Nigerian media reports say Abdulmutallab was estranged from his family. He had been living overseas for some time, Akunyili said, but she didn’t say where.

“The father, Alhaji Umar Mutallab, who is a responsible and respected Nigerian, with a true Nigerian spirit, had earlier reported his concern about his son’s activities to relevant American authorities,” she said. “The father has already expressed deep shock and regret over his son’s actions.”

Mutallab could not be reached for comment Sunday.

In Abdulmutallab’s hometown in northern Nigeria’s Katsina state, family members told The Associated Press they could not comment but expected the family to issue a statement.

A close neighbor told the AP he believed Abdulmutallab did not get his extremist ideas from his family or from within Nigeria.

Basiru Sani Hamza, 35, said Abdulmutallab was a “very religious” and a “very obedient” as a boy in the well-to-do banking family.

“I believe he must have been lured where he is schooling to carry out this attack,” Hamza said. “Really, the boy has betrayed his father because he has been taken care of all their needs.”

A teacher at his high school in West Africa said Abdulmutallab had been well-respected.

“At one stage, his nickname was ‘The Pope,’” said Michael Rimmer, a Briton who taught history at the British International School in Lome, Togo. “In one way it’s totally unsuitable because he’s Muslim, but he did have this saintly aura.

But Abdulmutallab also showed signs of inflexibility, Rimmer said.

In a discussion in 2001, Abdulmutallab was the only one to defend the actions of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Rimmer said. At the time, Rimmer thought the boy was just playing the devil’s advocate.

He also noted that during a school trip to London, Abdulmutallab became upset when the teacher took students to a pub and said it wasn’t right to be in a place where alcohol was being served.

Rimmer also remembered youngster choosing to give 50 pounds to an orphanage rather than spend it on souvenirs in London.

“In all the time I taught him we never had cross words,” Rimmer said from London in a telephone interview. “Somewhere along the line he must have met some sort of fanatics, and they must have turned his mind.”

Rimmer described the institution — an elite college preparatory school, attended by children of diplomats and wealthy Africans — as “lovely, lovely environment” where Christians often joined in Islamic feasts and where some of the best Christmas carolers were Muslims.

Abdulmutallab showed no signs of intolerance toward other students, Rimmer said, explaining that “lots of his mates were Christians.”

The Briton noted that he has not seen or heard from his former pupil since 2003, when he was about 15.

Students at his prestigious university in London, where Abdulmutallab lived in a smart white stone apartment block in an exclusive area of central London, said Abdulmutallab showed no signs of radicalization and painted him as a lax student with deep religious views.

“We worked on projects together,” Fabrizio Cavallo Marincola, a 22-year-old mechanical engineering student at University College, told The Independent newspaper. “He always did the bare minimum of work and would just show up to classes. When we were studying, he always would go off to pray.

“He was pretty quiet and didn’t socialize much or have a girlfriend that I knew of. I didn’t get to talk to him much on a personal level. I was really shocked when I saw the reports. You would never imagine him pulling off something like this.”

A message left with Marincola was not immediately returned on Sunday.

Associated Press writers Raphael Satter in London and Salisu Rabiu in Katsina state, Nigeria, contributed to this report.