U.S. probing if al Qaeda linked to airplane incident

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is investigating whether al Qaeda was involved in a Christmas Day attempt to blow up a passenger jet, but there is no early evidence the Nigerian suspect in the case was part of a larger plot, the U.S. homeland security chief said on Sunday.

U.S. authorities on Saturday charged Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, with attempting to blow up a Northwest Airlines plane as it approached Detroit on a flight from Amsterdam with almost 300 people on board.

Asked whether al Qaeda was involved, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told ABC's "This Week" program, "That is now the subject of investigation, and it would be inappropriate for me to say and inappropriate to speculate."

A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Saturday authorities were looking at the possibility that Abdulmutallab had ties to al Qaeda in Yemen.

"Right now, we have no indication that it is part of anything larger," Napolitano told CNN's "State of the Union."

On Sunday, the crew of that same Amsterdam to Detroit flight reported an emergency incident because of an unruly passenger. The plane landed safely and a Nigerian man was taken into FBI custody.

The man had raised concerns because he spent an unusually long time in the plane's bathroom, but it turned out he had a "legitimate illness," the Department of Homeland Security officials said.

President Barack Obama, on vacation in Hawaii, stressed the importance of maintaining heightened security for air travel, the White House said after Sunday's short-lived scare.

On Friday's flight, Abdulmutallab was overpowered by passengers and crew after setting alight an explosive device attached to his body, and was being treated for burns at a Michigan hospital. He is to make his first court appearance at 2 p.m. EST (7 p.m. British time) on Monday in federal court in Detroit.

Citing U.S. officials, the Wall Street Journal said the Nigerian told investigators that al Qaeda operatives in Yemen had given him the device and told him how to detonate it.

Republicans appearing on Sunday television news programs questioned whether the Obama administration was doing enough to monitor potential threats, noting that Abdulmutallab's father had reported concerns about his son's behaviour to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria.

"There's much to investigate here. It's amazing to me that an individual like this who was sending out so many signals could end up getting on a plane going to the U.S.," Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said on ABC.

Obama appealed through his spokesman Robert Gibbs for Republicans and Democrats to avoid a political fight.

"I hope that everyone will resolve in the new year, to make protecting our nation a nonpartisan issue rather than what normally happens in Washington," Gibbs said on NBC.

Security officials were investigating how Abdulmutallab had been able to get explosive materials onto the plane despite higher security worldwide since the September 11, 2001, hijacked airline attacks in the United States. Al Qaeda was held responsible for those attacks.

Napolitano said authorities were reviewing rules on who goes on lists to identify people who might pose threats and also would review screening policies and technologies.

The U.S. government created a record of Abdulmutallab last month in its central repository of information on known and suspected international terrorists, U.S. officials said. That list has some 550,000 people on it.

Gibbs told CBS' "Face the Nation" that Abdulmutallab's entry into that database was because of the father's information. But he added, "There was not enough information to bring him more forward to either the selectee or the no-fly database list."

'SYSTEM WORKED'

Napolitano and Gibbs sought to reassure travellers that they would be safe.

"Everybody played an important role here. The passengers and crew of the flight took appropriate action," she said of the incident on Northwest Airlines flight 253, a Delta-owned Airbus 330. Delta Air Lines has taken over Northwest.

"The whole process of making sure that we respond properly, correctly and effectively went very smoothly," she said.

Peter King, the top Republican on the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee, disagreed.

"He made it on the plane with explosives and he detonated explosives. If that had been successful, the plane would have come down and would have had a Christmas Day massacre with almost 300 people murdered. So this came within probably seconds or inches of working," King said on CBS.

Airports and airlines in the United States and around the world have tightened security after the foiled attack.

An initial FBI analysis found the device used by Abdulmutallab contained PETN, also known as pentaerythritol, one of the explosives carried by "shoe bomber" Richard Reid in his failed attempt to blow up a U.S. passenger jet just before Christmas in 2001, months after the September 11 attacks.

The device consisted of a six-inch (15-cm) packet of powder and a syringe containing a liquid, which were sewn into the suspect's underwear, according to media reports.

A Dutch passenger, Jasper Schuringa, was credited with subduing Abdulmutallab as he was igniting the explosives.

In an interview with CNN, Schuringa said he saw Abdulmutallab was holding a burning object between his legs. "I pulled the object from him and tried to extinguish the fire with my hands and threw it away," Schuringa said.

Abdulmutallab started his journey in Nigeria's commercial hub of Lagos, where he boarded a KLM flight to Amsterdam before going through another security checkpoint at Schiphol airport, Dutch counter-terrorism agency NCTb has said.

(Reporting by Will Dunham, Corbett B. Daly, Adam Entous and Jeremy Pelofsky in Washington, Kevin Krolicki and Bernie Woodall in Detroit, Tabassum Zakaria in Hawaii, Nick Tattersall in Nigeria, Editing by Jackie Frank and Doina Chiacu)