The flaws in the security will only become more embarrassing as days pass. Stories like this could rock the foundation of airport security around the world. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that the suspect had far more explosive than the “shoe bomber” and could have blown a hole in the plane.
TAYLOR, Mich. — An attorney who was aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day says he saw another man come to the assistance of accused bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab when he tried to board the airplane in Amsterdam without a passport.
Kurt Haskell, a Taylor attorney, told FBI agents what he saw near the boarding gate at Amsterdam when he was questioned at Detroit Metropolitan Airport following Abdulmutallab’s alleged attempt to blow up the aircraft, said Haskell’s wife Lori, who is also an attorney and was traveling with her husband.
“The two of us were sitting on the floor playing cards,” Lori Haskell told The Detroit News. “My husband noticed two men walk up to the ticket counter lady. The only reason he noticed them is that he thought they were really a mismatched pair.”
The man they later learned was Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian, wore older, scraggly clothing, but the man who was assisting him, who appeared to be of Indian descent, was dressed in what looked like an expensive suit and shoes, she said.
The well-dressed man told the ticket agent: “We need to get this man on the plane,” Haskell recounted. “He doesn’t have a passport.”
The ticket agent told the man nobody was allowed to board without a passport, to which the well-dressed man replied: “We do this all the time; he’s from Sudan,” Haskell said, adding she and her husband believe the man was trying to pass Abdulmutallab off as a Sudanese refugee.
