Word: alhaji
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Across the highway from the towering and luxurious Hilton Hotel is one of the smartest neighborhoods in the Nigerian capital of Abuja. There, on Asa Street, is the residence of Alhaji Umar Mutallab, a household name in Nigeria and the former chief of the United Bank for Africa and the First Bank of Nigeria, two of the country's largest financial institutions. In the past few days, however, he has become better known around the world as the father of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the young man accused of trying to blow up Northwest/Delta Flight 253 over Detroit on Christmas...
This is not the kind of attention Alhaji Mutallab is used to. Having retired just last week as chairman of First Bank, he is regarded as one of the richest men in the West African nation. (He also founded Jaiz International, the first bank operating on Islamic principles in Nigeria, in 2003.) The family controls many businesses in Nigeria and abroad...
...Getty Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was one of the banker's 16 children and the third child of Alhaji Mutallab's second wife. Born in 1986, he lived a privileged life in a country where 90% of the population survives on less than $2 a day. He was known as a basketball player while growing up and a great football fan, his favorite club being Arsenal. But his passion for sports seemed to have waned with time, religious fervor taking its place, according to friends. "Farouk was a devoted Muslim who took his religion seriously and was a committed student," Alfred...
Abdulmutallab's father, Alhaji Umar Mutallab, a former Nigerian Government Minister, had warned the U.S. government six weeks ago that his son, a devout Muslim, had dropped out of sight and appeared to be growing more radical. (Mutallab regularly travels to the U.S. for health checkups.) But in response to that warning, Washington simply added Abdulmutallab's name to the more than half a million others on the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) roster, the least rigorous of its four watch lists. It basically serves as a repository of suspicious characters; the placement of him on that list required...
...student by the name of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had been enrolled in the mechanical-engineering course at the school from September 2005 to June 2008, although it stressed that it could not confirm the student was the same man being questioned in Detroit. In his interview with the AP, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab said his son had been a university student in London but had left Britain to travel abroad. He said his son had not lived in London "for some time," but he wasn't sure exactly where he had gone. (See how al-Qaeda is creating a crisis...