 | | The accused terrorist is 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallabm of Nigeria. | |
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Airports across the United States and around the world are on high alert. Now a passenger has come forward with disturbing new details about the plot to bring down a jet, including the astonishing claim that the accused terrorist was able to board the plane without a passport.
Kurt Haskell showed INSIDE EDITION his boarding pass for Northwest flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit. The lawyer, who lives outside Detroit, was returning home from an African safari when he says he saw the terror suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallabm, and another man, who he thought was Indian, approach the ticket agent.
"Only the Indian man spoke," says Haskell, "And what he said was, 'This man needs to board the plane but he doesn't have a passport.' "
A photo shows the 23-year-old Nigerian being dragged off the plane moments after heroic passengers and crew subdued him.
"His clothes were like jeans and a t-shirt or something, he looked kind of thin, like a 16-year-old teenager, and the other man, looked like he was 50 years old, looked like he was a wealthy, Indian man. I just couldn't figure out why they were together," Haskell tells INSIDE EDITION.
Al Qaida is now taking responsibility for the attack.
On Good Morning America, Dutch passenger Jasper Schuringa shared details of how he jumped out of his seat and put the suspect in a headlock.
"He was holding the object which was on fire and smoke was coming out of it and I really had to pull it out of his hands because he kind of resisted and it was also kind of stuck in his underwear so I really had to rip the whole object out of his pants," Shuringa said.
Now the nation is asking how the suspect, who was on the government's terrorist watch list, was able to get on the plane with an explosive device, without luggage, and buying a one-way ticket, in cash, for $2,800.
Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano is coming under after a comment she made on ABC's This Week.
"The system has worked really very, very smoothly over the course of the past several days," she said.
Napolitano later backpedaled during an appearance on the Today show: "I think the comment is being taken out of context. What I'm saying is once the incident occurred, moving forward, we were immediately able to notify the 128 flights in the air of protective measures to take," she told Matt Lauer.
In the aftermath of the latest terrorist attack, are full-body scanners the future of airport security? A full-body scanner nicknamed "The Peeper," is now in use in just 19 U.S. airports. The device can see right through clothing.
INSIDE EDITION's Paul Boyd went through a full-body scanner that was being tested in Orlando. The scan identified everything under his clothes, from his cell phone to his microphone clip.
But airport passengers polled by INSIDE EDITION said the added security is worth the loss of privacy.
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