Christian Purefoy is reporting on CNN that Abdul Mutallib ran into a radical Muslim network while studying in London. He was last registered in class at University College London in June 2008. This fall he had wanted to go study in Cairo, but his father was worried about his unsavory friends and afraid he would hook up with Egyptian radicals there. So the family sent him to study in Dubai instead. Sometime in late October he sent the family a text message that he was going off to Yemen and that the family would find it difficult to trace him because he was throwing away his phone’s sim card. So it appears that he was recruited into a radical Salafi cell in the United Arab Emirates that sent him to Yemen.
See Glenn Greenwald’s interview with Gregory Johnsen, a Yemen expert at Salon this week.
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