Dutch Police Arrest 12 on Northwest Flight

By TOBY STERLING

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – The case of 12 men taken away in handcuffs from a Northwest Airlines flight diverted to Amsterdam has been handed over to prosecutors, who have three days to decide whether to charge or release them, police said Thursday.

The Bombay, India-bound DC-10 turned back over German air space Wednesday when air marshals and crew grew suspicious of passengers they saw using mobile phones shortly after the plane took off from Amsterdam, officials said.

Customs police spokesman Rob Staenacker said the case was handed over to prosecutors after the suspects underwent initial questioning at Schiphol Airport. He said he could not disclose the charges the suspects may face.

Prosecutors could not immediately be reached for comment.

Authorities have three days to bring the suspects before a judge and seek further detention. If they are terror suspects, a judge could order them held for another 14 days without hard evidence.

The Defense Ministry said the captain on the Northwest flight radioed Amsterdam seeking permission to return with a military escort, and jet fighters were scrambled from a northern Dutch military air field.

A U.S. government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, said that crew members and air marshals observed the passengers attempting to use cell phones and passing cell phones back and forth while the airliner was taking off.

“It was behavior that average passengers wouldn’t do,” the official said.

Passengers on the diverted flight gave varying accounts.

The Algemeen Dagblad newspaper quoted Nitin Patel of Boston, who sat behind the men in business class, as saying, “I don’t know how close we were, but my gut tells me these people wanted to hijack the airplane.”

Another passenger, who was not identified, told NOS television he sat next to one of the men and saw nothing suspicious.

A third, who identified herself only as Alpa, told AP Television News that some of the men appeared to be of South Asian ethnicity.

The security alert was the latest among several incidents reported since British police said they foiled a plot to blow up U.S.-bound aircraft. On Friday, a British plane made an emergency landing in southern Italy after a bomb scare, and the U.S. Air Force scrambled jets to escort a United Airlines flight from London to Washington as it was diverted to Boston.

The Dutch national anti-terrorism office said it saw no reason to raise the country’s threat level.