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Insufficient Evidence

Police Release Terror Suspects in Bonn

Citing insufficient evidence, officials have released two terror suspects in Bonn who were arrested after boarding a KLM flight at the Cologne airport just over a week ago. The investigation, however, is continuing.

Two men arrested just over a week ago on suspicions they may have been planning a terrorist attack have been released by police. After their release on Tuesday, the Public Prosecutor in the German city of Bonn said officials still believe then men were planning a serious crime, but conceded they did not have enough evidence to keep them in custody.

The city's chief public prosecutor said the investigation would continue despite the suspects' release.

Security officials arrested the men, both of Somali origin, on Friday, Sept. 26 at the Cologne-Bonn airport in western Germany after they boarded Dutch carrier KLM for a flight to Amsterdam. Officials at the state Office of Criminal Investigation for North Rhine-Westphalia believe the men were planning to participate in suicide attacks.

Prosecutors said they did not have compelling evidence of an imminent attack, however, and that what they had gathered was insufficient to keep the men in jail.

The arrest sparked controversy within Germany's national security agencies. Officials at the country's intelligence agencies have been monitoring the two men, who belong to the Bonn Islamist scene, and believe they were arrested too soon.

The men had been planning to travel via Amsterdam to Entebbe, Uganda, where it is suspected they wanted to make contact with an Islamist extremist group.

dsl - with wire reports