Sun, 26 Dec 2010
The Hague/Rotterdam - Dutch prosecutors on Sunday announced that they would shortly release five of the 12 Somali men arrested on Christmas Eve for allegedly planning a terrorist attack, after their interrogations invalidated the suspicions against them.
Their release was expected to still take place on Sunday.
Earlier in the day, relatives of the 12 detainees had protested their innocence to the media.
The men had "nothing to do with terrorism," the brother of one of the men told the daily De Telegraaf.
The arrests took place in the port city of Rotterdam after the Dutch secret service, AIVD, said it had concrete evidence of planned attacks.
It had proof that a "number of Somalis were planning to carry out an attack in the Netherlands in the near future," the AIVD said according to the public prosecutor disclosure on Saturday.
The public prosecutor was expected to announce on Monday what would next happen to the men, all aged between 19 and 48.
Police searched an internet cafe, four flats and two hotel rooms in Friday's raids, confiscating 11 computers - but failed to find any explosives or weapons. The target of the planned attacks also remained unclear, prosecutors said.
"We are normal, hard-working people. It must be a big misunderstanding," a man named Nuur told reporters in Rotterdam.
According to De Telegraaf, his brother Osman M F is among those arrested. He is reportedly the owner of the internet cafe.
Nuur, who has lived legally in the Netherlands for 12 years, said his brother arrived in the country from Germany six years ago. He had German citizenship, he said.
Dutch authorities did not confirm the report.
Several of the Somali suspects had acquired Dutch citizenship, a police spokesman said Saturday. Six of them had lived in Rotterdam, five had no fixed address and one had traveled to the Netherlands from Denmark.
Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/359739,released-netherlands-summary.html.
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