Germany releases alleged terror suspects

COLOGNE, Germany, Oct. 8 (UPI) -- The two men arrested as terror suspects last month at Cologne/Bonn Airport in Germany have been released.

Their lawyers had protested the continued jailing of the men because of a lack of evidence against them, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported Wednesday.

The pair, a 23-year-old Somali and a 24-year-old German of Somali origin, identified by German media as Abdirazak B. and Omar D., were taken off a KLM passenger plane bound for Amsterdam in the morning hours of Sept. 26.

They are still suspected to have planned a terror attack, but their jailing couldn't be upheld because of legal reasons, officials said.

"Investigator's evidence was very scarce," Mutlu Gunal, the lawyer defending Omar D., told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

German police for months had surveyed the terror suspects. The arrest came after police found farewell letters stating that both would lend their lives to "jihad and possible terror attacks," a spokesman for the police officer who arrested the pair told German news channel N24.

The arrests came at the height of a terror scare in Germany.

Germany's federal police in late September alerted border authorities across the country to be on the lookout for Eric Breininger, a 21-year-old terror suspect who had been hiding in Pakistan.

Breininger is one of Germany's most wanted men. He had close ties to a terrorist cell arrested in western Germany in 2007, and in a video that was posted on the Internet he announced he wanted to launch terror attacks in Germany.