Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab: British police look into London connection

British Airways said all carriers were asked to revise their security arrangements, which would include additional screening passengers and their hand luggage. The airline restricted carryon luggage to one bag per passenger — and let travelers know about the before they arrived at the airport.

A spokesman at London's Central Mosque, one of London's largest, said Mutallab was not known in the mosque.

Britain has been at the center of several international terror plots since 2005 and has been a recruiting hotbed for militants.

The deadliest attack occurred in 2005 when four suicide bombers killed themselves and 52 rush hour commuters. Three of the bombers — Europe's first suicide attack — had Pakistani origins while another was a Muslim convert with ties to Jamaica.

But the thwarted plot in London that has been hardest felt around the world has been the trans-Atlantic airliner attack.

Several men were recently convinced in London in the 2006 plot that was intended to rival the Sept. 11 attacks.

The men tried to smuggle explosives through security in soft drink bottles. Massive disruptions were caused around the world and a ban on taking liquids through airport security still exists.

Rohan Gunaratna, an al-Qaida expert, said Friday's thwarted attack appeared to be a copycat of the trans-Atlantic technique.

He said the powder used turns to liquid and is then ignited. The technique was apparently developed by an al-Qaida leader in the tribal areas of Pakistan, Gunaratna said.

"What is surprising is that this man is Nigerian," he said, noting that recruiting in that country has not been the norm, and is more common in major European capitals like London. "Yemen and Somalia have been the two most important terrorism theaters developing, although it seems clear that Mutallab was recruited in London — probably not at a mainstream mosque but on the sly with militant groups."

An Algerian man accused of links to al-Qaida was arrested near Belfast in 2003 with 25 computer disks filled with instructions on building compact bombs and other weapons and on smuggling them onto a plane.

Investigators contended that Abbas Boutrab — who unsuccessfully sought asylum in the Netherlands, Ireland and the United Kingdom using several aliases — was carrying instructions on how to build a bomb using a 7-ounce mixture of potassium chlorate, sulfur, sugar and baby powder.

Such an explosion could have torn apart passenger seats or punctured a plane's fuselage.

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Associated Press Writer Paisley Dodds contributed to this report.

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