(Reuters) - Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian man who tried to set off an explosive hidden in his underwear while aboard a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day in 2009, on Monday had his life sentence upheld by a federal appeals court.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected arguments by the man known as the Underwear Bomber that the sentence was cruel and unusual punishment, and that U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds in Detroit had erred by letting him represent himself at trial despite doubt about his competency.