Jet bomber's £3m lifestyle in UK

A BRITISH-based Al Qaeda ­terrorist was bundled off a passenger jet after he tried to blow it up on Christmas Day.

Police enter flat of suspected bomber in London s west end Police enter flat of suspected bomber in London's west end

Six armed officers ­surround the privileged fanatic who had tried to turn himself into a human firebomb aboard Flight 253 to Detroit.

A coat is draped around his legs. They were burnt when a package strapped to them caught fire as he tried to detonate it by injecting a liquid.

The would-be suicide bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, lives in a ­£3million Regency flat in ­London’s West End.

And it is from Mansfield Street that he is said to have planned the atrocity, which would have killed 277 fellow passengers and 11 crew.

Police outside bomber s flat in London Police outside bomber's flat in London

Many more people could also have died if the Delta Airlines Airbus 330 had crashed to the ground, as he had planned, on its approach to Detroit airport in Michigan.

Abdulmutallab boasted to FBI agents as he was seized that he had been sent on his murderous mission by Al Qaeda chiefs in Yemen.

Last night he was under guard in a Detroit hospital as FBI agents, working with British Secret Service officers from M15 and MI6, were trying to establish if he was acting as a lone suicide bomber or part of a bigger terror cell planning more 9/11-style outrages.

Scotland Yard anti-terror detectives swarmed all over Abdulmutallab’s flat, nestled between Oxford Circus, Harley Street and the BBC headquarters in Portland Place, shortly after his foiled attempt just before noon on Christmas Day.

Abdulmutallab, who studied mechanical engineering at University College London from 2005 to 2008, appears to be an Al Qaeda sleeper who used family wealth to blend in with fashionable city life.

He is the son of a wealthy Nigerian minister and banker, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, just retired as chairman of the First Bank.

The father is reported to have warned both Nigerian and US security authorities about the threat posed by his extremist son two months ago. Even as a pupil at the British International School in Lome, Togo, Abdulmutallab was known for preaching Islam.

His second floor, three-bedroomed apartment is at 2 Mansfield Street, a six-storey, white-walled Regency house. It boasts roof gardens bedecked with lavender. The flats are understood to be rented from an upmarket property company which handles millionaire clients.

Yesterday the address was the scene of intense police activity, crawling with forensics officers looking to see if he had used it as a base to plan the atrocity.

Abdulmutallab is believed to have lived at the apartment with other members of his family.

Rebecca Pelayo, 58, who has worked at the building for 12 years said she had seen him come and go in recent months. She said: “I think they are students. I don’t see them a lot but I have seen people coming and going. Most people who live here also live in the country so sometimes people are not around for long periods.”

Yard officers were trying to discover if Abdulmutallab had made a “martyr video” and were also checking his incoming and outgoing emails.

US reports said he was on a terrorist database but, crucially, he was not on the list of those who are not allowed to travel.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown faces tough questioning on how and why a man on a US list of terror suspects was able to study for three years here, then continue to live in London. Mr Brown last night vowed to take whatever action was necessary to protect passengers.

Abdulmutallab is believed to have taken a KLM flight from Lagos in Nigeria to Schiphol airport in Amsterdam. He then boarded Flight 253 and acted normally until the plane was close to landing.

At British airports, passengers heading for the US faced extra security checks last night. British Airways were restricting passengers to one piece of hand luggage.

The FBI is trying to discover if Abdulmutallab has links to British shoe bomber Richard Reid, 35, and to a radical extremist group in Detroit.

The leader of the group, Luqman Ameen Abdullah, 53, also known as Christopher Thomas, was killed last October in a shoot out with FBI.

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