His expression flat, the 23-year-old Nigerian accused of trying to blow up an airplane on Christmas Day hobbled into a Detroit courtroom on Friday.

The attempted bombing of a US airliner was a potentially disastrous "screw up" by the intelligence community, President Barack Obama said on Tuesday.

Internet postings purportedly written by a Nigerian charged with trying to bomb a US airliner on Christmas Day suggest a religious and lonely man.

President Barack Obama on Tuesday blamed ”human and systemic failures” for allowing a botched Christmas Day attack aboard.