Why Mutallab's Bombing Attempt Failed - US Security Chiefs

United States Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has revealed the details behind the terror attempt on the Detroit bound airline on 25th December, 2009 by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and why he failed.

TSA Chief Mr. John Pistole said that the attempt failed because the explosive in question was designed to mix volatile liquids with two syringes, effectively preventing the failure that plagued bomber's device in his attempt to bomb the airplane.

Pistole said: "The next-generation device was new and improved in many respects over the original, but failed underwear bomb worn by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on Christmas Day, 2009.

The explosive was designed to mix volatile liquids with two syringes, effectively preventing the failure that plagued Abdulmutallab's device. The bomb-maker had used household caulk to seal the device and prevent any vapors from alerting detectors or bomb-sniffing dogs" The Transportation Security Administration chief pressed further that the previous security detection system of the agency would not have discovered the bomb just as he ascribed the device to Ibrahim al-Asiri, a member of al Qaeda's Yemen branch whom he called one of the world's most wanted terrorists

He also made it known that the United States security authorities were on high alert because the "Underwear 2" bomb, designed to blow up an airliner over the United States recently, had never been seen before, adding that he had readjusted TSA security systems to respond to the bomb, which was discovered after a double agent foiled the plot last year

A U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds had last year sentenced Abdulmutallab to a life imprisonment for an attempt to blow off a Detroit-bound aircraft carrying 289 people on Christmas Day 2009 with explosives. The sentence however ended the country's highest-profile terror case since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But before the sentenced, Detroit lawyer Anthony Chambers, legal adviser to Abdulmutallab who had then pleaded guilty to eight charges in October, 2011, argued the mandatory life sentence constituted cruel and unusual punishment. Abdulmutallab however appealed his life sentence, a day after the judge issued the maximum penalty for trying to destroy a plane but lost the legal tussle owing to the gravity of the offence with which he convicted for.