Passenger to undie bomber: 'dude your pants are on fire!'

[1]

One of the most significant Al-Qaeda plots in years collapsed to the cry 'hey dude your pants are on fire' as explosives in the underwear of a Nigerian man failed to detonate aboard a packed US-bound airliner.

The humiliation was far from over for the allegedly failed suicide bomber aboard the Northwestern flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas 2009, a court heard on Tuesday in the first day of his high-profile trial.

His trousers were around his ankles when four passengers pulled him from his seat, exposing his badly burned genitals and what remained of his underwear.

"They were bulky and they were burning," passenger Mike Zantow testified.

The underpants 'resembled something I hadn't seen before', Zantow said, adding that 'they reminded me of my son's pullups when he was little'.

Prosecutors on Tuesday describe how Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 24, prepared himself for martyrdom by fasting, praying and performing a purification ritual in the bathroom as the plane began to make its descent to Detroit.

He then walked back to his seat, pulled a blanket over his head, yanked down his trousers, emptied a syringe into the powdered explosives stitched into his underpants and waited for the plane to crash.

Zantow, a military contractor and army veteran who was seated across the aisle and a row behind Abdulmutallab and was flying home to see his terribly ill mother, said he heard a loud pop that sounded like a large firecracker.

The plane was silent for 30 seconds to a minute and then pandemonium to broke out.

Zantow stood up and saw passengers and crew members rushing over as smoke billowed up from between Abdulmutallab's legs while the young man simply sat there burning.

"I never saw any reaction at all," Zantow told the jury.

"I heard him say nothing."

Prosecutors said Abdulmutallab spoke plenty after he was hauled up to first class where an off-duty airline employee and other passengers could stand better guard over him.

On the way there, a package of what was left of the explosives rolled under seat 13B. FBI tests showed it to be PETN, a hard to detect and powerful explosive, US attorney Jonathan Tukel told the jury.

It took just seven minutes for the pilots to land the plane after crew members alerted them to the fire.

At this point, pilots thought the fire was caused by a firecracker. But when a border control agent came to collect Abdulmutallab he saw the burns must have been caused by something far more powerful.

He asked Abdulmutallab what happened.

In the few minutes it took for paramedics to arrive, the young man told him that he had been trained by Al-Qaeda in Yemen and planned to bring the plane down over US soil using a bomb hidden in his underwear.

He would tell the same story to FBI agents and hospital staff.

Nearly two years later, Abdulmutallab - who is representing himself - did not have anything to say to jurors in opening statements. But he reserved the right to speak to them later in the trial.

He faces life in prison if convicted of eight terrorism related charges, including attempted murder of the 289 other people on board.