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Somalis held in Rotterdam on suspicion of terror links
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by alaaron | December 25, 2010 at 05:56 am
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Twelve Somalis have been arrested in the Netherlands on suspicion of involvement in terrorism.
The men were arrested in the port city of Rotterdam, and were thought to be planning an attack within the Netherlands, Dutch prosecutors said.
In a statement, prosecutors said the 12 were aged between 19 and 48.
A shop and four houses were searched in Rotterdam and two hotel rooms in a southern town, prosecutors said. No weapons or explosives were found.
Six of the men arrested lived in Rotterdam, five had no known address and one was a Danish resident, the prosecutors' statement said.
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at 11:14 on December 30th, 2010
All have been released, and charges against nine of them have been dropped. The other three of the initial twelve are still suspects currently under investigation by the Dutch National Detective Squad, but they're also free.
All twelve had been arrested in a raid by Dutch national counterterrorism force DSI.
Apart from the small number of actual suspects of what the Dutch civil intelligence service estimated as an immediate threat, the others simply happened to be there at the time of the police raid.
The counterterrorism force "don't ring the doorbell; they simply go in and they're not soft-handed", in the words of Dutch national counterterrorism coordinator Akerboom, who added that in that kind of operation there just was no time to check the civic registration of everyone present, since speed was needed.
Several of those arrested have said they would sue for damages.