WASHINGTON - Al-Qaida leader Anwar al-Awlaki personally directed and approved the attempted bombing of a US airliner which a Nigerian man tried to carry out on Christmas Day in 2009, according to new details released by federal prosecutors on Friday.
Awlaki, who was a leader of the militant group's affiliate in Yemen, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), before he was killed in a drone strike last year, directed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to conduct a strike aboard an American airliner over US soil.
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Abdulmutallab, 25, is due to be sentenced Thursday in Detroit and faces up to life in prison after pleading guilty to charges he tried to down a Northwest Airlines jumbo jet with 289 people aboard on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.
