Al-Qaeda Targets Detroit Through Yemen

James Phillips / December 29, 2009

The foiled bomb plot to destroy a Northwest Airlines flight as it descended over Detroit on Christmas day has focused new attention on the al-Qaeda franchise based in Yemen. The radicalized Nigerian Muslim who failed to destroy the airliner, Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab, reportedly has told the FBI that he was equipped and trained by al-Qaeda operatives while he lived in Yemen from August to early December. News of this Yemeni connection has spawned a spate of media reports about a “new front” in the war against terrorism. But those who follow terrorism issues know that Yemen long has been a stronghold of al-Qaeda and a staging area for many past terrorist attacks.

In fact, al-Qaeda’s first terrorist attack against Americans came in Yemen, the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden’s father, who had migrated to neighboring Saudi Arabia before the birth of the al-Qaeda leader. In December 1992, bin Laden’s followers bombed a hotel in Yemen that was used by U.S. military personnel involved in supporting the humanitarian food relief flights to Somalia. (more…)