Tale of Two Nigerians: Suspect, Father Travel Diverging Paths
By SARAH CHILDRESS And WILL CONNORS
KADUNA, Nigeria—As a child in this northern Nigerian town, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab used to chastise his banker father for not giving more money to the poor, invoking his family’s adherence to the tenets of Islam.
“He preached to his father all the time,” said Mahfuz Datti, Mr. Abdulmutallab’s childhood friend.
This week brought word of a different sort of family gathering. Mr. Abdulmutallab, who allegedly tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day with explosives sewn into his underwear, began cooperating with federal law-enforcement agents last week, U.S. officials said Tuesday. Providing rare behind-the-scenes detail of how the U.S. is handling the case, these officials said Mr. Abdulmutallab ended a month of silence after receiving visits over several days from family members.
The terrorism allegations against Mr. Abdulmutallab have brought international attention to his father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, one of Nigeria’s richest men, who approached U.S. authorities in November with concerns about his son’s radicalization. The latest family visit appeared to mark a stark split between the two: On Wednesday, officials confirmed that Mr. Abdulmtallab’s mother and siblings, not his father, were at the visits. “The father and son’s relationship is broken,” said a senior U.S. law-enforcement official.
An examination of the lives of the 70-year-old father and the 23-year-old son shows they were shaped by similar experiences and shared many traits, including a withdrawn seriousness and devotion to Islam. The father became one of Nigeria’s top bankers, with extensive Western and Nigerian contacts. The son, who came of age amid sporadic religious clashes in his hometown and attended elite schools abroad, would ultimately be drawn to violent extremists.