Swedes scramble to charge terror suspect

SWEDISH police scrambled yesterday to meet a legal deadline to charge a man of Tunisian origin suspected of a plane hijack plot just days before the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Intelligence and police sources said on Saturday that the man, whom Swedish media have identified as 29-year-old Kerim Chatty, had been planning to hijack a Ryanair flight to Britain and crash the plane into a US embassy in Europe. He was arrested Thursday after a gun was found in his hand luggage at Sweden's Vasteras airport, west of Stockholm. Any charges must be brought by noon today under Swedish law.

“It’s hectic. There are many things we have to do. We do not want him to be set free on Monday,” said police spokesman Ulf Palm.

A top police official said the man had taken flying lessons in the United States and a newspaper reported police had already questioned him since September 11 after he visited Saudi Arabia, birthplace of Washington’s chief suspect in the suicide hijack attacks, Osama bin Laden.

Sweden’s Aftonbladet tabloid said Swedish security services had interviewed Chatty about possible contacts with radical Muslim groups after he returned from Saudi Arabia where he had been studying Islam. Chatty’s lawyer said yesterday his client admitted having a gun as he tried to board the aircraft in Sweden, but denied planning a September 11-style attack.

A highly-placed intelligence source said police were hunting four more men, including an explosives expert, who were believed to have worked on the plan with the suspect.

“We know for sure that the plan was to crash the plane into a US embassy in Europe,” the source said, but intelligence sources and police disagreed. One police official flatly denied the embassy plan.

The case was certain to unnerve Western governments who have already ordered extra security precautions before September 11, when suicide hijackers killed more than 3,000 people by crashing four seized airliners into buildings in New York, Washington and a field in Pennsylvania.

James Lamb, assistant chief flight instructor with the North American Institute of Aviation in Conway, South Carolina, said an FBI agent was at the school Saturday seeking information on Kerim Chatty, a former student.

Mr Lamb said Chatty had been “terminated” for poor performance and lack of progress.