Telegraph calls Mutallab a “British student”

Here’s the headline from Britain’s “conservative” paper:

Detroit: British student in al-Qaeda airline bomb attempt

A Nigerian engineering student at a British university, Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, tried to blow up a transatlantic aircraft in a suspected al-Qaeda plot, it is claimed.

Now if Mutallab were a British national, then he could legitimately be called a “British student.” But all indications are—and the sub-headline also says it—that he’s a Nigerian national studying in Britain. Evidently the editors of the Telegraph are following the honored journalistic custom by which a Mexican illegal alien who arrived in, say, Charlotte, North Carolina a month ago and commits a murder there is described as “a Charlotte man.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 26, 2009 12:47 PM | Send