Hanan Mohamed al-Samary, the 22-year-old student arrested in Yemen on Friday in connection with the parcel bombs affair has now been freed. The move followed protests in Yemen over her detention.

As I suggested here yesterday, it appears that she was the victim of identity theft. She was released after the shipping agent in Yemen was asked to identify her and said she was not the woman who had signed the documents for sending the parcels.

However, according to a Yemeni official, whoever did send the parcels was in possession of her name, address and phone number. If earlier reports are correct, the bombmakers also had her SIM card.

It now appears that Ms Samary is a student of computer engineering, not medicine as reported earlier.

Meanwhile, US officials have identified Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri as the key suspect behind the manufacture of the bombs.
The BBC, citing President Obama's counter-terrorism adviser, says both bombs were made by the same person who made the"underpants" bomb that failed to explode on a Detroit-bound plane last year. 

"Asiri is also believed to have built the bomb his brother, Abdullah, used in an assassination attempt on the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Mohammed Bin Nayif," the BBC adds. 

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 1 November 2010