Turkey arrests wrong bin Laden

Turkish police have admitted that a man arrested at Istanbul airport this morning was detained simply because his surname was bin Laden.

The authorities in Turkey believed 23-year-old Abdullah bin Laden was a brother of Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in last month’s attacks in the United States.

However, it has emerged that the student, who studies computers in the Turkish part of Cyprus, is not Osama bin Laden’s brother and was wrongly arrested.

The incident is likely to anger civil liberties activists, who have expressed concern that new laws sparked by the US atrocities could severely compromise people’s basic civil rights.