Two arrested at Schiphol on terrorism conspiracy charges

Two men arrested at Schiphol airport at the behest of the US authorities are being held on suspicion of ‘conspiracy to a terrorist criminal act’ the public prosecution department said on Tuesday.


‘In a few days it will be made public if they will be charged,’ the department said in a statement.
The US authorities are being kept informed about the progress of the investigation but no more information will be given out at the present time, the department said said.
Klaas-Arjen Krikke, a lawyer for one of the men, confirmed his client faces terrorism charges.
‘I am not happy about the information which is now doing the rounds,’ Krikke told news agency ANP. ‘My client has already been found guilty via the media in the eyes of the public.’
Chicago

The two men, who were not on the US no fly list, were on a connecting flight from Chicago to Yemen when they were arrested at Schiphol airport.
Dutch police had been alerted after US officials found a number of suspect items in luggage belonging to one of the men which had been put on a flight to Washington.
According to the New York Daily News, airport security screeners in Birmingham, Alabama first stopped one of the men and referred him to additional screening because of what officials said was his ‘bulky clothing’.
He was found to be carrying $7,000 in cash. A check of his luggage found a mobile phone taped to a bottle, a number of mobile phones taped together, three large knives and a number of watches.
Cleared
But there was no indication of explosives and he and his luggage were cleared for the flight from Birmingham to Chicago, the paper said.
In Chicago, he was joined by another man, also a Yemeni national. The men then took a different flight from Chicago to their luggage.
One security source told ABC the men may have been making a test run to assess security controls.
In December, a Nigerian man tried to detonate explosives hidden in his underwear on a flight to Detroit from Amsterdam.

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