Lair where bomber prayed for peace... and plotted massacre

NEAT and spotless, just as he left it, we find the room where crazed syringe bomber Umar Abdulmutallab prepared to blow up an airliner.

The 23-year-old terrorist locked himself in it for hours at a time weeks before setting off on his deadly journey.

On the maroon carpet near his single bed, Abdulmutallab knelt and prayed loudly, disturbing his flatmates in Yemen as he wailed himself into a frenzy of hate... while pretending to them that he wanted PEACE.

And he left no clue as to what went on within the whitewashed walls as he headed off on the next stage of his mission - to explode a bomb strapped in his underwear on Flight 253 as it descended into Detroit on Christmas Day with 289 people aboard.

"His room was unusually spotless," said Matthew Salmon, one of his flatmates. "He had cleaned it thoroughly. Everything was gone, there was nothing left over."

But the Nigerian's tidiness masked a messed-up, tortured mind.

CLOSED - Rundown mosque visited by bomber

"The walls here are thick - but Umar's prayers echoed around the building," said Salmon.

"He spoke of peace - and told me he saw a world where people would live in harmony and there would be no need to kill each other any more.

EMPTY - Terrorist's wardrobe cleared out

"I was stunned and angry when I learned what he'd tried to do."

Along with our exclusive images of the bomber's lair in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa we can reveal how the former British student planned to head back to the UK after visiting an Al Qaeda training camp before the attack.

We have also uncovered a sinister backstreet mosque visited regularly by Abdulmutallab as he made his preparations.

The 23-year-old bomber moved into halls of residence at the Sanaa Institute for Arabic Language in September.

He used his time there to wind up his hate before his final training for his suicide mission in which he tried to use a syringe of chemicals to detonate the bomb before being overpowered by passengers.

Three wooden doors lead to his sparsely furnished room. He bolted them all to keep out prying flatmates.

TIDY: Bomber Abdulmutallab swept all evidence out of his room in Yemen

"He spent all his time locked in his room," said Canadian Salmon, 27, studying Arabic and Islamic Law at the Institute.

"We would get up and he would be in his room and would still be there when we came home in the evening. Five times a day I'd here him praying."

Christian Salmon first met softly-spoken Abdulmutallab in late September.

"He told me he had come to the Yemen to improve his Arabic and see the place where he believed real Islam was practised," said Salmon. "He was passionate about Islam and told how it brings peace to people and ends killing."

HIDEAWAY - He prayed here five times a day

Salmon said the terrorist always wore full Islamic garb on the rare occasions he came out of his room. "He wore traditional white full-length dress skirt with slippers and an Islamic skull cap," he said. The only time Salmon ever saw Abdulmutallab venture out of the halls was to go to the city's rundown Al-Hurqan Mosque, shunning the city's main mosques.

"He only ever went out on Fridays. He would always go to the mosque at noon and come back an hour later and go straight back to his room.

"He never really associated with anybody outside the flat." When the News of the World visited the Al-Hurqan mosque hidden away in the back streets it was padlocked. No imam was available for comment.

EXPLOSIVES - In his pants

There are fears that this is where Abdulmutallab could have been radicalised by firebrand clerics or Al Qaeda recruiters. Salmon last saw Abdulmutallab - who was educated at a prestigious British boarding school in Togo - in October. The bomber told him he was planning to go to the UK.

"He said he would be in Yemen for maybe a month or two before heading back to Britain. He was very specific about returning to Britain," says Salmon. Engineering student Abdulmutallab attended the University College of London between 2005 and 2008. From 2006 to 2007, he was president of the school's Islamic Society.

MI5 investigated his strong links to the UK after he was refused a new student visa in May because he applied to study "life coaching" at a non-existent college.

It has emerged that CIA officials at the US embassy in Nigeria were also warned of the threat he posed - by his father, wealthy Nigerian banker Alhaji Umaru Mutallab.

DETONATOR - Melted syringe

Alhaji contacted the service stating that his son was in contact with Muslim terrorists and had met with militants in Yemen.

The embassy sent a cable to Washington and the CIA sent a report to the National Counterterrorism Centre on November 20. But despite Abdulmutallab being put on the US government's terror database, he was not added to the No Fly List.

On December 16, Abdulmutallab paid £1,775 in cash in Ghana for a one-way air ticket from Nigeria to Detroit via Holland on Christmas Eve.

He got on Northwest Airlines flight 253 at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam with 80 grams of the high-explosive chemical PETN strapped inside the crotch of his underwear.

The bomber worked with a Dutch terror cell who pointed out the loopholes in security Schiphol Airport, intelligence sources revealed.

But he failed to detonate the bomb on the approach to Detroit.

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