WASHINGTON — Two men arrested in Amsterdam may have been conducting a dry run for a potential terrorist attack, U.S. officials said Tuesday after a cell phone taped to a Pepto-Bismol bottle and a knife and box cutters were found in one of the men's luggage.
U.S. law enforcement were pursuing leads in Detroit, Birmingham, Ala.; and Memphis, Tenn., according to officials speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation.
The arrests come at a time of heightened alert just days before the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Tuesday the men were not on any U.S. terror watch list.
A U.S. law enforcement official identified the men as Ahmed Mohamed Nasser al Soofi and Hezam al Murisi. One of the men, believed to be from the Detroit area, is of Yemeni descent, a law enforcement official said.
Two U.S. officials said investigators are looking into whether this was a dry run for a future terror attack and whether they were testing the aviation security system to see whether strange items and travel patterns would raise suspicion.
Dutch investigators questioned two men arrested at Amsterdam's airport after U.S. authorities found the suspicious items one of them men's checked luggage. The pair were arrested Monday morning at Schiphol Airport after arriving on a United Airlines flight from Chicago, where their decision to change their flight plans raised flags in the U.S., officials said.
RTL Television News broadcast video footage filmed on a passenger's cell phone of armed law enforcement officers escorting two men off the plane, their hands bound behind their backs. The officers' weapons were holstered and there appeared to be no resistance.
They were being held at the airport for questioning, but neither has been charged with any offense in the Netherlands, said Martijn Boelhouwer, spokesman for the national prosecutor's office. Under Dutch law, the men can be held without charges for up to six days.