British businessmen taken off flight ‘for discussing bomb’

AN EASYJET flight heading for the UK made an emergency landing in Germany after British passengers were overheard talking about a “bomb”.

The three men were held and questioned by German police after the flight from Slovenia to London was diverted to Cologne on Saturday night.

One of their bags was destroyed by police officers.

The men were not previously known to police and do not appear to have any links to Islamic extremism, it was reported by German media before the three were released last night.

The men were believed to be employees of a London-based company, on their way home to Britain from a business trip.

The flight had taken off from the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana when other passengers overheard two of the men talking.

According to German media, they had been heard discussing “a bomb or explosives”.

They were also carrying a book with a sniper rifle on the cover, police and state prosecutors said in a joint statement.

The concerned passengers alerted the cabin crew, who informed the captain.

‘[The men were questioned] on the suspicion of the preparation of a serious state-threatening violence’

He decided to divert the plane to Cologne.

There, all 151 passengers were taken off the Airbus 319 by emergency slides and nine people received medical treatment.

Two of the men were immediately detained, and the third was held after his bag was destroyed by police in a controlled explosion. The bag, which had potentially suspicious cables in, could not initially be identified and was destroyed as a precautionary measure.

However, a search of the bag’s remains and of the aircraft found no trace of an explosive device or hazardous material.

“We searched the plane with sniffer dogs all night,” a police spokesman told Bild newspaper. “There were no traces of explosives in the aircraft or in the suspects’ luggage.”

Officers questioned them “on the suspicion of the preparation of a serious state-threatening violence” and examined their mobile phones, but found no evidence they were planning an attack, according to Christoph Gilles, a police spokesman.

German police did not comment on the content of the conversation beyond saying it had “terrorist content”.

The three men, aged 31, 38 and 48, were later released. They have not been identified because of German privacy laws.