2 Terror Suspects on US Flight Arrested by Dutch Police
Reports have emerged that 2 passengers on a United Airlines flight from Chicago to Amsterdam have been arrested by Dutch police after suspicious items were found in their checked luggage. The US Department of Homeland Security revealed that the items weren’t dangerous in and of themselves, but police in the Netherlands were notified. Apparently the items looked like mock bombs, but it’s possible they were deliberately put on the flight to see if security would catch them.
One of the men that was arrested has been identified as Ahmed Mohammed Nasser al Soofi, a 48-year-old Yemeni who lives in the US. He was carrying $7,000 in cash and the items in his 2 checked bags appeared as mock bombs - a number of mobile phones and watches taped to empty bottles. The second man that was arrested was Hazem Abdullah Thabi al-Murisi, a 37-year-old that was traveling in the US on a visitor’s visa and is also a Yemen national.
What made this so suspicious was that the two men were making the same decisions. Al Soofi was set to fly from Chicago to Dulles Airport and then to Yemen, while Al-Murisi was also due to fly from Chicago to Dulles. However, they both changed their itineraries to flights to Amsterdam. The bags that al Soofi checked, though, didn’t follow him and stayed on course for Dulles, where US authorities confiscated them.
Despite the coincidences, authorities have said that the two men aren’t linked, while the bagged items aren’t thought to have been part of a terror threat. However, investigators are still probing into why al Soofi had the mock bombs in his luggage, believe that it may have been his own security test.
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