‘Underwear Bomber’ Gets Life Sentence.  Read Our Original Coverage.

As the Airbus 330 carrying 278 passengers and 11 crew members began its descent into Detroit on Christmas Day, witnesses say Abdulmutallab got up from his seat by the window in the economy section and went to the bathroom. He stayed there for 20 minutes. When he returned, he told his seatmate that his stomach had been bothering him. He put a blanket over his lap and tried to inject chemicals from a syringe into a packet containing three ounces of explosive powder that he had retrieved from his underpants. The bomb should have been powerful enough to blow a hole in the plane. But instead passengers heard a popping sound, like a firecracker, and saw flames.

Newsweek January 11, 2010