Bomb suspect's arrest detailed in chronology

The 23-year-old Nigerian man accused of attempting to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day was read his Miranda rights nine hours after his arrest, according to a detailed chronology released yesterday by White House officials.

The timing of events during the arrest, initial interrogation and medical treatment of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was made available after Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, made statements about the process that administration officials believe are misleading.

"It makes no sense to get a guy off an airplane who just tried to blow up the airplane and read him his rights within 50 minutes," Graham said in an interview on Fox News.

Graham is one of several Republicans who have cited the handling of Abdulmutallab as an example of what they see as the administration's faulty response to a terrorist assault on a U.S. airliner. On Feb. 3, Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, said the American people and Congress wanted to know "why an al-Qaida-trained terrorist fresh from Yemen and caught in the act of an attempt to blow up an airliner was handed over to a lawyer after a 50-minute interview."

The first questioning of the suspect, which took place more than three hours after his arrest and without him being read his Miranda rights, ended after 50 minutes when doctors said his medical condition had deteriorated, according to the chronology. When interrogation resumed, some five hours later, the Nigerian refused to answer further questions and was then read his Miranda rights.