The man who tried to board a flight to Britain from Sweden with a loaded gun in his hand luggage two months ago will not be charged with attempted hijack, the prosecutor's office said today.
Mr Kerim Sadok Chatty, a 29-year-old Muslim of Tunisian origin, was seized at Vasteras airport 100 km (60 miles) west of Stockholm on August 29 as he was about to board a Ryanair passenger jet with 189 people on board.
"He will be charged only with illegal firearm possession," Magnus Nordangard, a spokesman for Chief Prosecutor Mr Thomas Haggstrom, told reporters.
Mr Haggstrom will file the formal charges in about one week.Chatty was held in custody for a month while police investigated the case.The incident came just before the anniversary of the September 11th attacks. Alarm grew when it emerged that Chatty had taken flying lessons in the United States.
Several of the hijackers suspected of carrying out the suicide attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington learned to fly at US aviation schools.
On September 30th, the prosecutor set Mr Chatty free, saying the suspicion that he was preparing to hijack the plane had weakened during the course of the investigation.
"It has not been possible to determine his intentions. We have nothing but his word for it," Mr Nordangard said.
Interest in the Vasteras case was fuelled by intelligence sources telling reporters that Mr Chatty had planned to crash the plane into a US embassy in Europe in a copycat strike of the September 11th attacks - a theory rejected immediately by Swedish security police and Mr Chatty's lawyer.