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Oslo airport stops tourist with ‘terrorist name’

A Swedish man set to take off on his "dream holiday" to Mexico was turned away before boarding, as Oslo flight officials claimed he shared the name of a wanted terrorist.

“I was told that I couldn’t board the flight,” Abdifateh Ahmed Mohamed told Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.

“They said I was a terrorist. I’ve never been suspected of a crime in my whole life."

When he was detained on Monday, it wasn't the first time that Mohamed, 30, has met with problems at international border controls.

This time it was border police at Gardermoen Airport that delayed the processing of his ticket.

After a call to the United States, a decision was made that he would not be allowed to board the flight, according to Aftonbladet.

Mohamed's two travelling companions, who were allowed to continue, had to leave him behind. Airport personnel recommended him to contact the American Embassy in Oslo, where staff said they were unable to help him.

Stranded in the Norwegian capital, Mohamed had little option but to take a flight back to Arlanda Airport in Sweden.

“We’d planned the trip for so long. I was so damn irritated. What can I do? I feel powerless and offended,” he told Aftonbladet.

“My friends who don’t have Muslim names can go straight through while I am taken into a room by the side of the desk. I am actually thinking about getting rid of the name ‘Ahmed’ as it’s always that bit which causes problems,” said Mohamed, who works for the Swedish Migration Board.

It is unclear why American officials got involved in the case, as the passenger was heading elsewhere.

“As the traveller wasn’t travelling to, or through, the United States, this case shouldn’t have had anything to do with American authorities,” Chris Dunnett at the US Embassy in Stockholm told Aftonbladet.

The FBI has had the Egyptian terrorist Ahmed Mohammed Hamed Ali on its most wanted list ever since the 1998 US embassy bombings in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

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TERRORIST

Two Germany rail sabotage suspects detained in Prague

Czech authorities said Thursday they had detained two Iraqi terror suspects, a man and a woman, wanted by Austria over their role in 2018 attacks on trains in Germany.

Two Germany rail sabotage suspects detained in Prague
Police search the tracks on the ICE line between Nuremberg and Munich in October 2018. Photo: DPA

The arrest came on the heels of Monday's detention of a 42-year-old Iraqi in Vienna, also suspected in the case.

“Based on a European warrant issued by… Vienna… Czech police detained two foreigners shortly after their arrival at Vaclav Havel Airport in Prague,” Czech police said in a tweet.

They said the two were placed in a police cell and that a court would decide on their extradition to Austria.

SEE ALSO: Train suspect arrested in Austria over 2018 German train sabotage 

Marketa Puci, spokeswoman for the Municipal Court in Prague, said the court 
had received a custody request from prosecutors, on which it has to decide within 24 hours.

“The request concerns two Iraqi citizens, a man and a woman,” Puci told AFP. Also on Thursday, Austrian Interior Minister Herbert Kickl said in parliament that the two suspects “formed a cell together with the Iraqi”.

The detained are suspected of having strung a steel rope across the tracks between the southern German cities of Munich and Nuremberg, damaging the front window of a train in October last year.

A similar case occurred in December last year near Berlin when an overhead electrical line was damaged. No one was injured in either incident.

Vienna prosecutors said a technical error prevented casualties, adding that writings in Arabic and an Islamic State (IS) flag near the crime scenes established a suspected “terrorist” motive.

The Iraqi has admitted involvement in the two incidents but has denied any terrorist motive for the crimes, which would carry a maximum life-long prison sentence.

Austrian and German authorities worked together leading to Monday's arrest, according to a press release by criminal investigators in Germany's southern state of Bavaria.

Austrian media reported the Iraqi father of five was working at a security company with access to football stadiums.

Germany is on alert following several jihadist attacks in recent years. 

The most deadly was committed in 2016 by 23-year-old Tunisian Anis Amri, who killed 12 people when he stole a truck and ploughed it into a Berlin Christmas market.

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