Inspector Hallock said last night that the origin of the bomb remained unknown, and that the incident was under investigation.
He did not say how Libya had obtained the blueprints or the origin of the bomb designs.
While the origin of the bombing of Shiara hospital, which hit a hosptal corridor, has not yet been confirmed, the Gulf alliance admitted it bombed an MSF hospital in Haydan District, Sadaa province, northern Yemen, on 26 October.
Abdulmutallab's modus operandi was also not new: the method of concealment, the use of PETN explosives and the origin of the bomb (i.e. Yemen), have strong similarities with the assassination attempt on Saudi Prince Nayef in August 2009, as well as the detention of a Somali man, carrying similar powdered chemicals, and a syringe at Mogadishu Airport, Somalia, in November 2009.
Over the years, good books on the origins of the bomb have often appeared.
Officials said that the emergence of Mr. Slahi as a key suspect reinforces American and Canadian suspicions about the origins of the bomb plot.
AK: Explain the origin of the Glorious bombs?
For in time, the analogy to the origins of the nuclear bomb would prove all too apt".
Mike Davis, a left-wing American historian, traces the origins of the car bomb not to Belfast or Beirut, but to New York.
The origins of the hydrogen bomb date to the early 1940s, when the Italian-born physicist Enrico Fermi suggested to the Hungarian-born Edward Teller that a weapon based on nuclear fission was possible.
