Jet Bomber May Have Contacted Imam

An influential US politician suggested Saturday that the Nigerian man suspected of trying to blow up an airliner en route to Detroit may have had contacts with a radical Yemeni cleric.

Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab was badly burned in the botched Christmas Day terror attack as he tried to set off a sophisticated explosive device on a flight from Asterdam that had 278 passengers on board, witnesses said.

Peter Hoekstra, the most senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee and a member of Congress for Detroit's state of Michigan, told AFP the suspect could have links to US-born Yemeni imam Anwar al-Aulaqi.

Aulaqi, who is accused of being a senior Al-Qaeda recruiter, was known to have had emails contacts with US army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan who allegedly gunned down 13 people at a Texas military base last month.

"He (Abdulmutallab) may have been in contact with the American imam al-Aulaqi," Hoekstra said after the bomb suspect apparently tried to blow up a US airliner as it began its descent into Detroit.

"There are reports that he had contact and that he was recently in Yemen. The question we'll have to raise is was this imam in Yemen influential enough to get some people to attack the US again," Hoekstra said.

US media, citing a federal security bulletin, said the Detroit bomb suspect told investigators after being taken into custody that he had acquired the explosive device in Yemen, along with instructions as to when to use it.

The White House has declined to comment on reports that Aulaqi may have perished in a dawn air strike Thursday in a remote mountainous region of Yemen that Yemeni security sources said killed several senior Al-Qaeda figures.