Nigerian bomber preached peace before trying to blow up Detroit-bound flight

SANAA - Hours before heading for his mission to blow up the Detroit-bound Flight 253 on Christmas Day with 289 people aboard, Nigerian bomber Umar Abdulmutallab cleaned his flat spotlessly neat, prayed loudly and pretended to be wanting world peace, his flatmates have revealed.

“His room was unusually spotless. He had cleaned it thoroughly. Everything was gone, there was nothing left over,” News of the World quoted Matthew Salmon, one of his flatmates, as saying.

“The walls here are thick - but Umar’s prayers echoed around the building. He spoke of peace - and told me he saw a world where people would live in harmony and there would be no need to kill each other any more. I was stunned and angry when I learned what he’d tried to do,” Salmon added.

Weeks before setting off on his deadly journey, the 23-year-old terrorist locked himself in his room for hours at a time.

“He spent all his time locked in his room. We would get up and he would be in his room and would still be there when we came home in the evening. Five times a day I’d here him praying,” said Canadian Salmon, 27, studying Arabic and Islamic Law here.

Salmon said Abdulmutallab always wore full Islamic garb on rare occasions when he came out of his room.

The only time Salmon ever saw Abdulmutallab venture out of the halls was to go to the city’s rundown Al-Hurqan Mosque, shunning the city’s main mosques.

“He only ever went out on Fridays. He would always go to the mosque at noon and come back an hour later and go straight back to his room.

No imam of the Al-Hurqan mosque was available for comment.

There are fears that this is where Abdulmutallab could have been radicalised by firebrand clerics or Al Qaeda recruiters. (ANI)