Questions over suspect's visa

2009-12-28 17:02

Washington - US President Barack Obama's security chief demanded answers on Monday to how the Nigerian man charged with trying to blow up a US-bound jet managed to retain his US visa despite being on a terrorist watch-list.

"We all want to know the answer to that question," a stern-looking Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told CNN early Monday, referring to why US authorities did not revoke suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's two-year visa, which was issued in June 2008.

"And you know that will be part of the (review) process that we are undergoing at the president's direction over the next days and weeks," she said.

Napolitano made it clear that she believed the system for keeping dangerous people off airplanes failed.

"How do you move from that data to somebody actually being on a no-fly list? Here clearly something went awry," she told the Fox network.

"We want to fix that problem."

On general watch-list

Abdulmutallab was on a general watch-list known as a TIDE list, which has some 550 000 names but does not automatically bar those on it from flying internationally. The stricter no-fly list has roughly 4 000 names.

He eluded standard security screening and stepped onto a plane in Nigeria with explosives sewn into his underwear, then repeated the feat in Amsterdam where he boarded Northwest Airlines Flight 253 to Detroit on December 25, US authorities have said.

"Clearly this individual should not have been able to board this plane carrying that material," Napolitano said.

"What we are doing is, going backwards. How did this individual get on the plane, what didn't work in the screening procedure to pick him up, and why was the material he was carrying not picked up in the screening procedure as well?"

Critics slam White House

The security chief hit the Monday morning news shows in rapid succession, in an apparent attempt at damage control after critics skewered the White House and Napolitano in particular for saying on Sunday that "the system worked".

"That's a phrase taken out of context," she told CNN Monday, insisting that she had been referring to the security protocols put in place immediately after the terror attack.

"What I said is, 'moving forward,' meaning once the incident happened, we were able to immediately notify the 128 flights in the air, as well as airports on the ground domestically, internationally, our law enforcement partners, other allies, institute immediate safe procedures to make sure that this could not happen on other flights," she said on Monday.

When asked directly on CNN whether she felt the system in place to prevent an attack similar to Friday's worked, Napolitano said: "Obviously it didn't. No secretary of homeland security would say that."
 

- AFP