Rich and privileged - the gilded life of would-be plane bomber

• Banker's son expressed approval of 9/11 to teacher
• MI5 combing databases for alternative identities


Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's path towards apparent Islamist militancy took him to University College London and a luxury block just off the city's Oxford Street.

But no part of his life was so seemingly anomalous to a would-be terrorist as the manicured lawns and tennis courts of the British International school in Togo, where he is believed to have first expressed extreme views.

Today, investigators were trying to establish exactly what provoked him to try to detonate an explosive device as a Northwest Airlines jet made its final descent into Detroit airport on Christmas Day.

It certainly wasn't a life of poverty. He was born in extreme privilege, of the sort few Nigerians could ever dream of, and his education reflected this. His father, Umaru Mutallab, 70, is one of the country's most respected businessmen, who retired earlier this month as chairman of Nigeria's FirstBank, the oldest bank in the country, with offices in London, Paris and Beijing.

While the family comes from Katsina state in the Muslim-dominated north of Nigeria, where funding of hardline Islamist schools by Saudi Arabia and Iran has raised concerns of militancy among young people, Abdulmutallab first became noticeably religious while studying abroad at a very different institution.

He undertook his secondary education as a boarder at the British school in Lomé, Togo's capital, which is mostly staffed by teachers from the UK and attracts wealthy students from across west Africa. Set up in 1983, the school gives pupils a decidedly English-style curriculum, taught in air-conditioned classrooms set amid grassy grounds which also feature a swimming pool and tennis courts.

While pursuing his international baccalaureat, with impressive results, Abdulmutallab's preaching to his schoolmates earned him the nickname "Alfa" – a local name for Islamic scholars, according to Nigeria's This Day newspaper.

Michael Rimmer, who taught Abdulmutallab history, and escorted him and other pupils on a school trip to the UK, said the teenager had been a model student who was keen, polite and eager to learn. However, Rimmer recalled a classroom discussion on Afghanistan's then-Taliban leaders following the September 11 attacks in 2001. All the other students, Muslims included, expressed their abhorrence of the regime, he said.

"But [Abdulmutallab], actually, thought that they had it right and he thought their views were acceptable. I thought he was maybe just trying to play devil's advocate ... At the time I just thought, well, when people are young they can have silly views," he told BBC radio.

Rimmer said that on hearing about his former pupil's arrest he was angry both with him and "the nutters who put these silly ideas in his head".

He said: "He's got wonderful parents, he comes from a lovely family, he's got lots of friends, he had everything going for him. He's a fine-looking lad, very bright. I expected great things from him and he's thrown all this away. His parents will be absolutely devastated. He should have thought about this."

According to a series of reports, after attending UCL, which has confirmed that a student of the same name studied mechanical engineering between 2005 and 2008, Abdulmutallab moved on to Egypt and Dubai, from where he severed ties with a family that was becoming increasingly concerned by his views. He also reportedly told US investigators that he was trained by al-Qaida in Yemen before the alleged attack.

Nigeria's government said today that Abdulmutallab had been living outside the country "for a while" and only returned on Thursday, shortly before he left again on his way to Detroit.

This Day quoted unnamed members of Abdulmutallab's family as saying his father was so concerned at the young man's views that six months ago he reported his fears to both the US embassy in Abuja and Nigerian security agencies. Umaru Mutallab, who began his working career as an accountant with Fuller Jenks Beecroft and Co in London in the 1960s and also served as a minister in the Nigerian government for a time, said he was "really disturbed" to learn his son had been arrested and was talking to Nigerian officials about their investigations.

The newspaper spoke to another unnamed relative who said the family had become concerned in recent years that Abdulmutallab was involved with Boko Haram, a militant Islamist group also known as the Nigerian Taliban, which seeks to impose sharia law across the country. Hundreds of people were killed when security forces tried to crack down on the group in July this year.

"We know Farouk's extreme views and were always apprehensive of where it may lead him to," the relative said. "He has maintained his distance from us and we never bothered him much. He wanted to be left alone so we respect his wishes."

Any warnings were not, it seems, relayed to the UK. Abdulmutallab tried to return to Britain as a student in May this year and was refused entry, but only because UK Border Agency officials considered the educational institution he applied for to be bogus. His name, or the name he gave, did not appear on MI5 or counter-terrorist radar screens, according to officials.

MI5 is continuing to trawl its databases to see if there is any trace of Abdulmutallab's movements in Britain and communications he had with friends or associates here. The agency's officers have not immediately found any links, the Guardian understands. Counter-terrorist officers said one of the problems was that he may not have used that name either in documents or in conversations. They are looking for what one official called "fragments of information".

MI5 has devoted extra resources to the case to find out as much as they can about the young Nigerian, and are particularly keen to uncover information in two main areas: Abdulmutallab's relations with al-Qaida, if any, and how he managed to avoid security checks before boarding the plane. "The question is, to what extent is he linked to al-Qaida. He says he is but the term can cover a very broad spectrum," said a Whitehall official.

It is not unknown for people from privileged backgrounds to become involved with al-Qaida, for example with Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman Zawahiri. However, it seems that Abdulmutallab had no direct links with the al-Qaida core leadership based on the Afghan-Pakistan border, where most of Britain's suicide bombers or convicted terrorists trained.

Abdulmutallab's actions were condemned by Nigeria's government, which has ordered an investigation into the incident. A spokesman for the senate, Ayogu Eze, called it a "strange act of terrorism".

"We are at a loss as to where he got this strange habit, because Nigeria abhors terrorism in all its ramifications," he said.

Nigeria's civil aviation authority said yesterday that Abdulmutallab bought his ticket at the KLM office in Accra, Ghana, just over a week before he travelled and paid the $2,831 (£1,775) fare in cash.

Religious leaders across faiths also added strong criticism. Muslims constitute about half of Nigeria's 155 million people, with Christians slightly fewer. In recent years thousands of people have been killed in Muslim-Christian violence.

One of the most prominent incidents occurred in Abdulmutallab's home state, where a woman was sentenced to death by stoning for alleged adultery in 2002. The decision – which was later overturned – caused several Miss World contestants to withdraw from the beauty pageant, which was being held in Nigeria the same year.

CIF Guardian