U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade, who was sworn in Monday to head the Detroit office, has announced the team of prosecutors who will handle the Justice Department’s case against Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jonathan Turkel, Cathleen Corken and Michael Martin have been assigned to the case, McQuade said in an interview with The Detroit Free Press Tuesday.
Turkel, a 20-year veteran of the office, is chief the office’s National Security Unit. Corken spent six years in the Justice Department’s Counterterrorism Section, four of them as deputy chief, before it was folded into the National Security Division. And Martin is a former trial lawyer in the NSD’s Counterespionage Section. He was also an intelligence analyst for the CIA.
“We assembled a team … with highly relevant experience for handling this case,” McQuade said.
