SAN'A, Yemen - The Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a U.S. passenger plane on Christmas met in a Yemen's remote mountains with regional al Qaeda leaders, possibly including a radical American cleric who was also in contact with the alleged Fort Hood shooter, Yemen's deputy prime minister said Thursday.
However, Rashad al-Alimi insisted that 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was recruited by al Qaeda in Britain, before he arrived in Yemen last summer, and that he obtained the explosives used in the failed attack after he left Yemen.
Al-Alimi, the deputy prime minister in charge of defense and security, offered his government's most detailed account yet of Abdulmutallab's activities in the months leading up to his failed attack. He disappeared in Yemen for weeks before leaving the country on Dec. 4.
Al-Alimi said Abdulmutallab met with al Qaeda members in Rafad, a region tucked into an imposing wall of high mountains some 200 miles southeast of the capital. The sparsely populated region of craggy, desert peaks creased with valleys is in Shabwa province.
Among those he may have met with there was the U.S.-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.
"There is no doubt that he met and had contacts with al Qaeda elements in Shabwa, ... perhaps with al-Awlaki," al-Alimi told reporters. "I believe this place is indeed associated with Anwar al-Awlaki," he added.
The Awlak tribe, to which the cleric belongs, dominates much of the area.
A day before the Christmas bombing attempt, Yemeni warplanes, backed by U.S. intelligence, struck the same location. The Dec. 24 strike targeted a gathering of al Qaeda leaders, possibly including al-Awlaki as well as the head of al Qaeda's offshoot in Yemen and his deputy, al-Alimi said. They are believed to have survived, but Yemeni officials say at least 30 militants were killed.
Al-Alimi said the site was "the same one where the Nigerian met with al Qaeda elements."
The assault was one of a series of heavy airstrikes and raids Yemeni forces carried out last month. They were the biggest strikes in years by Yemen against al Qaeda in a new intensified alliance with the United States to uproot the terror group's offshoot here.
In the past week, Yemen has beefed up its ground forces in several provinces, setting up checkpoints and conducting searches -- particularly north of the capital, where it is hunting for the leader of a cell believed to have plotted attacks on the U.S. and other embassies in San'a.
Hundreds of al Qaeda fighters are believed to operating in Yemen, many finding refuge with tribes disgruntled with San'a. The weak central government has little control outside the capital and is burdened with crises, including a war in the north with Shiite rebels and frequent deadly clashes with separatists in the south, which was once independent.
Al-Alimi's comments fueled growing and longtime suspicions over al-Awlaki's role in al Qaeda.
The 38-year-old cleric, born in New Mexico to Yemeni parents, is a popular figure among al Qaeda sympathizers, known for his English-language sermons preaching jihad, or holy war, against the West. A decade ago, while preaching at U.S. mosques, he associated with two of the 9/11 hijackers.
Al-Awlaki has been linked to U.S. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged gunman in the Nov. 5 mass shooting at the Fort Hood, Texas Army post in which 13 people were killed. Months earlier, al-Awlaki exchanged dozens of e-mails with the accused shooter, and al-Awlaki later praised the attack.
Yemeni officials have depicted him as a spiritual adviser to al Qaeda militants. But last week, President Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, said al-Awlaki is "clearly a part of al Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula. He's not just a cleric. He is in fact trying to instigate terrorism."
Abdulmutallab is accused of trying to set off explosives hidden in his underwear while on an airliner bound for Detroit on Christmas Day. But the explosives didn't go off, burning him instead as other passengers wrestled him to the ground. He has since told U.S. investigators he received the explosives and was trained in their use by al Qaeda members in Yemen, according to American officials.
He first came to Yemen in 2004 and stayed for a year to study Arabic at a Sana'a school. He then moved to Britain, where he lived until 2008. He returned to Yemen in August, ostensibly to study Arabic at the same school. But he disappeared in September until he left the country on Dec. 4.
Al-Alimi insisted that Yemen's investigations have shown that during Abdulmutallab's first stint in Yemen, "he did not have any tendency or behavior indicating extremist ideas.
"During the period he was living in Britain, I believe he was recruited by radical groups in Britain," he said.
Al-Alimi also said Abdulmutallab received his explosives in Nigeria, disputing the U.S. accounts that al Qaeda elements in Yemen gave them to him.
Yemeni security forces have arrested a number of al Qaeda members who had contact with Abdulmutallab, the deputy prime minister said, without identifying them.
"We are pursing many of many of these elements that are connected to this subject. Some of these elements have been killed, others have been arrested and are being investigated. We will announce the results of these investigations later."
A midlevel al Qaeda leader who was confirmed killed in the Dec. 24 strike, Mohammed Ahmed Saleh Omair, had also met with Abdulmutallab earlier, al-Alimi said.
Al-Alimi said along with al-Awlaki, the leader of al Qaeda's offshoot in Yemen, Naser Abdel Karim al-Wahishi, and his deputy Saeed al-Shihri, were believed to have been at the Rafad meeting hit in the strike.
Al-Wahishi and al-Shihri, "were both there an hour before the operation," he said.
He said security forces tracked them after the strike and they were in a "weak state." He would not clarify if that meant they were wounded, but he said he could not confirm if they are alive.
