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Commandos grab 'terror suspects' on plane

Reuters
Friday 26 September 2008 10:44 BST
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German commandos grabbed two terrorist suspects from an airliner just before it was due to leave Cologne today.

Police said a 23-year-old Somali man and a 24-year-old German born in Somalia were arrested before the KLM flight left for Amsterdam.

A KLM spokeswoman said police boarded the plane when it was at its "point of departure" and seized the two suspects.

She said everyone was then forced to leave the plane, and there was a "baggage parade" to see whose bags belonged to whom.

Germany's Bild newspaper said police sources said the two had been under observation for months, and a suicide note was found in their apartment saying that they wanted to die for the "jihad."

Meanwhile police formally arrested three teenagers who ambushed two policemen in Cologne earlier this week in what was thought to be an Islamic extremist attack.

Reports said the youths, aged 15, 16, and 17 and with a background of migration, had repeatedly referred to "Jihad" during their interrogations.

They also apparently admitted that they wanted to kill the police officers in order to send a signal of Islamist terror.

The men had tricked a 26-year-old policewoman and her 38-year-old colleague late on Tuesday by making an emergency call.

When the officers approached one of them who was lying on the ground, the two others came out of hiding with guns.

The men fled but opened fire at the officers after they fired two warning shots.

It later emerged that the teenagers' firearms had only been starting pistols.

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