Alleged Swedish hijacker freed

A man caught with a loaded gun in his hand luggage as he tried to board a plane to London shortly before the anniversary of the September 11 attacks was freed yesterday by police in Sweden.

The arrest of Kerim Chatty, who like some terrorists who died in the attacks on New York and Washington had taken flying lessons in the US, led to fears that a similar atrocity had been planned.

Prosecutors interviewed 50 witnesses, including passengers on the Ryanair flight and Chatty's friends and family but failed to find evidence he planned to hijack the plane and fly it into a target.

However the authorities suspect he may have planned to hijack the plane for another reason.

He will not be allowed to travel abroad and must report regularly to the police in Stockholm. He is also bound to be closely monitored by Swedish security services.

Chatty was arrested on August 29 at Vaesteraas airport, 60 miles north-west of Stockholm, during a routine baggage check as he was about to board the plane, which had 189 passengers on board. He had a loaded 6.5mm pistol in a toiletries bag.

Intelligence sources said they believed he was planning to hijack a plane and crash it into a US embassy in Europe.

Chatty, who has previous convictions for theft and assault, told police he was on his way to an Islamic conference in Birmingham. He admitted having the weapon but denied planning to hijack the plane.

Relatives claim Chatty, a convert to Islam who had visited Saudi Arabia and had tenuous alleged links with supposed members of al-Qaida, had the gun in his luggage by mistake.

A district court has twice ordered him to be detained pending further invesigations. However, a deadline by which time formal charges had to be pressed, passed yesterday and Chatty was freed from prison and taken to a secret location.

The chief prosecutor, Thomas Haggstrom, said he found nothing to indicate that Chatty intended to crash the plane into a target in Sweden or anywhere else. There was no evidence he had plotted with anyone else but there was still "reasonable cause" to suspect Chatty may have planned to seize control of the plane.

A spokesman for Mr Haggstrom, Magnus Nordangaard, said Chatty did not fit the profile of a suicide attacker. However, he said: "He must have had some idea about (what to do with) the weapon, and he hasn't been able to explain that in a credible way."

Chatty's lawyer, Nils Uggla, urged prosecutors to drop the hijacking case.

He said: "If the prosecutor has not found anything more in a whole month, then they should drop the whole case."

Mr Uggla said he was forbidden to reveal the reason his client had the weapon.