WASHINGTON: Some airlines were telling passengers on Saturday that new government security regulations prohibit them from leaving their seats beginning an hour before landing. The regulations are a response to a suspected terrorism incident on Christmas Day.
Air Canada said in a statement that new rules imposed by the Transportation Security Administration limit on-board activities by passengers and crew in US airspace. The airline said that during the final hour of flight passengers must remain seated. They won’t be allowed access to carryon baggage or to have any items on their laps.
Flight attendants on some domestic flights are informing passengers of similar rules. Passengers on a flight from New York to Tampa Saturday morning were also told they must remain in their seats and couldn’t have items in their laps, including laptops and pillows.
The TSA issued a security directive for US-bound flights from overseas, according to a transportation security official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly. The official said passengers traveling internationally could see increased security screening at gates and when they check their bags, as well as additional measures on flights such as stowing carryons and personal items before the plane lands.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a statement Saturday that passengers flying to the US from overseas may notice extra security, but she said the measures “are designed to be unpredictable, so passengers should not expect to see the same thing everywhere.”
Air Canada said it was limiting passengers to one carryon bag in response to a request from the US and Canadian governments. The airline advised US-bound passengers to restrict their carryon item to “the absolute minimum” or to not carry any bag on board at all. US-bound flights on all airlines are experiencing significant delays, said Duncan Dee, Air Canada’s executive vice president and chief operating officer.
Meanwhile, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian accused of trying to blow up the jet, was a brilliant student, but even at school he was likened to an imam because of his Islamic fervor, according to media accounts.
The 23-year-old Abdulmutallab is the youngest of 16 children of a powerful Nigerian banker, who worried about his extreme views. The accused man studied mechanical engineering at University College London.
Before college, Abdulmutallab went to the British International School in the Togo capital, Lome, Togo, where he was known for preaching to classmates and was nicknamed “Alfa,” a local term for Muslim scholar, Nigerian newspaper This Day reported. Michael Rimmer, who taught history at the school, told the BBC that his former pupil had supported the Taleban regime that ran Afghanistan until they were deposed by a US-led coalition in 2001 after the September 11 attacks.
From Lome, Abdulmutallab went to London and British police have searched a string of properties, including a plush mansion block in the upscale Marylebone district where Abdulmutallab is thought to have lived in a flat. He is believed to have gone to University College which has said that an Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab studied mechanical engineering there from 2005 to 2008, though it could not confirm this was the jet bomb suspect.
This Day said that after London, Abdulmutallab moved to Egypt and then Dubai, telling his family that he was severing all ties with them. Security officials told US media that Abdulmutallab had told them he trained with an Al-Qaeda bomb maker in Yemen.
Abdulmutallab was barred from returning to Britain in May.
A Sunday Times report, confirmed to AFP by a government official, said the UK Border Agency rejected Abdulmutallab’s request for a visa for the six-month course because the college concerned was considered bogus.
The suspect’s father, Umaru Mutallab, was so worried about his son’s religious extremism that he contacted the US embassy in Abuja in November, a US official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The official said Abdulmutallab had been added to a broad terrorism watchlist, but was not put on a no-fly list.
The 70-year-old father was the former chief of the United Bank for Africa and First Bank of Nigeria, two of the nation’s biggest banks. He retired last week as chairman of First Bank and had also founded the first Islamic bank in Nigeria, Jaiz International Bank, in 2003.
Mutallab left his home city of Funtua in northern Katsina State for Abuja on Saturday to meet with security officials to discuss his son’s case.
“I have been receiving telephone calls from all over the world about my child who has been arrested for an alleged attempt to bomb a plane,” Mutallab told AFP.
“I am really disturbed. I would not want to say anything at the moment until I put myself together,” he said. “I have been summoned by the Nigerian security and I am on my way to Abuja to answer the call.” This Day said the father as surprised that his
