Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called “underwear bomber” accused of trying to blow up an airliner over Metro Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, says he assaulted several prison guards Wednesday while he was observing the holy month of Ramadan.
The disclosure came in a handwritten letter Abdulmutallab filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Detroit. In a second filing, Abdulmutallab, 24, asked a judge to immediately release him from a federal prison in Milan, said he is being wrongly imprisoned and should be judged by the law of the Quran.
The filing doesn’t make clear what prompted the alleged assault, but Abdulmutallab seems to make a connection to his observance of the Muslim holy month.
Following the assault, Abdulmutallab said prison guards used excessive force to restrain him, according to a handwritten filing Thursday in U.S. District Court in Detroit.
Abdulmutallab, who fired his legal team last year and faces an Oct. 4 trial, asked U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds to protect him from prison guards using excessive force.
His legal adviser, Detroit lawyer Anthony Chambers, sent attorneys to visit Abdulmutallab in prison Thursday following the incident.
“He’s doing OK,” Chambers said. “Obviously, there are some issues going on. I don’t know what triggered anything. It is Ramadan month, he is observing, but what happened, I do not know.”
A Bureau of Prisons spokesman was unaware of the incident.
“In a situation where force is used, we only use the force that is necessary to control the situation,” Bureau of Prisons spokesman Chris Burke said.
Abdulmutallab wrote the incident happened between 5 a.m. and 10 a.m. Wednesday while he was observing Ramadan.
“Defendant Abdulmutallab, in defense of Muhammad (peace be upon him … the messenger of Allah to Mankind who is being defamed and abused by the United States of America) assaulted several officers from his cell,” he wrote. “As a result, excessive force was used to restrain defendant Abdulmutallab who was already in a closed cell on his own.”
He asked Edmunds to order prison guards not to use excessive force while he is “justly defending Muhammad and his religion,” according to the court filing.
Islam’s holiest month, Ramadan requires Muslims fast from dawn to dusk.
Known as the “blessed month,” it is marked by prayers, works of charity and abstinence from food, tobacco, sex and liquids during the day. The religious observance began Aug. 1 and ends Tuesday.
In a filing Thursday, Abdulmutallab said he is being unjustly detained by the U.S. and “subjected to the Rule of Man.”
He asked Edmunds to order his release “and that the defendant only be judged and ruled by the law of the Quran.”
His request for freedom has “zero” chance of being granted, said Peter Henning, a law professor at Wayne State University and ex-federal prosecutor.
“That argument has never worked in a U.S. court,” he said. “You are judged, and international law recognizes, by the law of the nation where your crime took place.”
Abdulmutallab fired his legal team last year, a move that has complicated pretrial maneuvers in arguably the most high-profile terror case in the U.S. since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Abdulmutallab faces charges that could keep him in prison for life, including conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism, attempted murder inside an aircraft, taking a bomb onboard a plane and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.
He is accused of concealing explosive chemicals in his underwear and trying to detonate them as a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam approached Detroit Metropolitan Airport.