There is no connection between the people arrested at airports yesterday and the hijackers who carried out Tuesday's terrorist attacks, a US senator has said. Senator Joseph Biden, who is head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that he had spoken at length to the FBI and the CIA and that reports that box cutters and knives were seized were false.
Earlier reports had said that up to eight people were arrested at Kennedy and La Guardia airports, carrying knives and false identification, including a fake pilot's licence.
Meanwhile, Belgian police have said that four people belonging to a "radical Islamic movement" were arrested in Brussels yesterday. They said that they were taken into custody in connection with attacks in New York and Washington.
A spokesman for the prosecutor's office said: "Until now, no link has been established with the Bin Laden movement." He added that Uzi-type automatic weapons and magazines of ammunition had been seized during searches. The spokesman said that two of the men had since been released.
In a further development, Dutch police arrested four people today in the port city of Rotterdam suspected of being members of a radical Islamic network. A spokesman for the Dutch Prosecutor's office confirmed that the arrests had been made, but could not say if they were related to the attacks in the United States.
A Pentagon official has said that both black boxes from a hijacked jetliner that crashed into the Pentagon were found by searchers in the rubble today. The flight data and voice data recorders have been turned over to the Federal Aviation Administration.
The boxes could help investigators find out more information about the short flight of the American Airlines jetliner that was commandeered by hijackers shortly after it left nearby Dulles International Airport en route to Los Angeles. It crashed into the headquarters of the US military with 64 passengers and crew on board.
