20091228

ABUJA (Reuters) - The family of a Nigerian man who tried to blow up a U.S. passenger jet said on Monday they had lost contact with him while he was studying abroad and had reported his disappearance to security agencies two months ago.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, was charged on Saturday in the United States with trying to blow up Northwest Airlines flight 253 as it approached Detroit from Amsterdam on Christmas Day with almost 300 people on board.

"His father, having become concerned about his disappearance and stoppage of communication while schooling abroad, reported the matter to Nigerian security agencies about two months ago and to some foreign security agencies about a month and a half ago," the Mutallab family said in a statement.

"The disappearance and cessation of communication which got his mother and father concerned ... are completely out of character and a very recent development," said the family statement, which was sent to Nigerian media.

The media had quoted family members as saying his father had been uncomfortable with his son's "extreme religious views" and had reported him to the U.S. embassy in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, and to security agencies.

Abdulmutallab began his journey to Detroit in Lagos, Nigeria's commercial centre, where he boarded a KLM flight to Amsterdam before going through transit at Schiphol airport.

The son of a respected former banker, he is from a privileged background in Africa's most populous country, most of whose estimated 140 million people live on less than $2 a day.

Investigators in the United States are trying to confirm his claims that he has connections to al Qaeda.