British police arrested a man at the airport in the English industrial town of Birmingham as he stopped over on a flight from Pakistan to Canada this evening, and held the plane on the tarmac to conduct searches.
The arrest was made hours after a Swedish man of Tunisian extraction was arrested in Sweden off a flight to Britain when he was found with a handgun in his carry-on luggage.
The Swedish man was travelling to attend an Islamic conference in Birmingham, but there was no indication the two incidents were related.
The arrests came less than two weeks before the first anniversary of the September 11th hijack attacks on US cities.
"We were called to the airport after a routine security check of passengers by security staff. One man was arrested and will be questioned. The aircraft is now subject to a more detailed examination," a police spokeswoman said.
She gave no further details, other than to say the plane with 192 passengers on board was en route from Islamabad to Toronto, and that none of the passengers had been due to disembark in Britain.