Twelve Indian men who arrived Saturday in Mumbai after being held in Amsterdam on suspicion of planning an airplane terrorist attack called the incident a "misunderstanding" and said they had no complaints about their treatment.
The Muslim export traders were detained Wednesday by Dutch police at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport after the Mumbai-bound US Northwest Airlines plane turned back following a report by the pilot of worrying behaviour by some passengers.
"It was a misunderstanding on the part of the airline," Mohammad Iqbal Batliwala told reporters in Mumbai, India's financial capital, according to the Press Trust of India.
"We had exchanged seats. We were in a group so we were adjusting seats among ourselves. They misunderstood and thought we were going to do something to the plane," he said. "We were treated well and want to forget it as a bad experience," he said.
Anxious relatives broke down in tears on seeing the men. "This is no less than (the Muslim festival) Eid for us. We haven't eaten or slept for three days and now we want to celebrate," Farzeen Chotani, the wife of a released passenger, told CNN-IBN television.
The passengers' return came a day after India strongly protested their detention to the Netherlands and said it was "shocked" by the way they had been treated. The foreign ministry summoned the Dutch ambassador to India, Eric Niehe, to express its dismay.
"The government of India has taken strong notice of this development. It is an incident which is not only unfortunate but should have never happened," junior foreign minister Anand Sharma said. The incident stirred angry comment in Indian newspapers Saturday.
"If brown equals terrorist, doesn't white equal racist?" asked the Hindustan Times in an editorial. "What is shocking is that security officials, whose job it is to be able to not make dangerous generalisations, seem to be as ignorant as the Regular Joe Racist," it said. The passengers were released Thursday after Dutch prosecutors found no evidence of a terrorist threat.