COPENHAGEN: Danish police said on Saturday they had questioned and later released two suspects who were found travelling in the Swedish-registered black Volvo that sparked a major crime search on Friday. Police briefly shut bridges and ferry links to Sweden and Germany as they hunted for the car, which Sweden’s Aftonbladet newspaper said was wanted in connection with a kidnapping. The two suspects, who police said were thought to be linked to a “serious crime,” were later freed. The pair were detained after being seen acting suspiciously near the scene of the potential attack.
The investigation continues, police said, but gave no further details.
“The Volvo was located nearby, and its behaviour close to the people under threat... indicated that an attack was about to happen,” chief police inspector Jorgen Bergen Skov said at a press briefing in Copenhagen.
Friday’s search, in which the country’s armed forces also took part, briefly shut the Oresund bridge and tunnel, a near 16km (10-mile) road and rail link with Sweden. Other bridges, ferry services and Copenhagen’s main railway station were also temporarily shut.
“We were acting in case of a worst-case scenario,” Skov said about Friday’s comprehensive police operation
Hundreds of Danish police officers and soldiers launched the massive manhunt on Friday, suspending ferries and shutting down the Oresund Bridge connecting Denmark and Sweden, authorities said.
Road and rail traffic on the bridge, the setting of the popular Nordic noir series The Bridge, was cut off around 1200 GMT in both directions between Copenhagen and Sweden’s third-largest city Malmo.
The Copenhagen police said in a statement that they were looking for a Sweden-registered Volvo carrying three people “connected to serious crimes”.
Ferry traffic to Sweden and Germany was interrupted and the Great Baelt Bridge between the large Danish islands of Sjaelland and Fyn was also closed.
Both bridges were reopened around 1400 GMT as thousands of travellers were stranded in train stations, tunnels and on roads around Copenhagen.
Maritime traffic was slowly recovering and some trains linking western Denmark to Copenhagen skipped some stops to catch up, according to a journalist at the scene.
“I spent 41 years in the Danish police, I have never seen such a big action taken before,” Hans Jorgen Bonnichsen, the former head of operations at the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET), told local media. — Agencies
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