BERLIN // Two men suspected of plotting attacks were arrested on a KLM aeroplane at Cologne airport in western Germany today, police said. Farewell letters had been found, a police spokesman told German television. A 23-year-old Somali man and a 24-year-old German born in Somalia were arrested before the KLM flight left the airport, the North Rhine-Westphalia state police said. "The police did not storm the plane," spokesman Frank Scheulen told Reuters television. "It all went off in quite an unspectacular manner." No further details were immediately available from the police but Der Spiegel magazine website said police did not suspect the men were intending to hijack the plane. A KLM spokeswoman said on NOS news in the Netherlands that police boarded the plane when it was at its "point of departure" and grabbed the two suspects. Everyone was then forced to leave the plane, and there was a "baggage parade" to see whose bags belonged to whom, she said. The flight, KL1804, continued its journey to Amsterdam just over an hour later and has since landed in Amsterdam.
No further details were immediately available and no one was immediately available at KLM to comment. *Reuters and AP
