BRUSSELS, March 16 (Xinhua) -- Amsterdam's police chief said the authorities had taken a justifiable decision last week to arrest seven suspects and cordon off a busy shopping area in the Dutch capital after receiving a warning of a possible terrorist attack in the area, Dutch paper De Volkskrant reported Monday.
The woman who called the police about midnight Wednesday knew details about the culprits in the 2004 Madrid bombings that had not been made public, the paper quoted Bernard Welten, the Amsterdam police commissioner, as saying.
This was why the authorities in Amsterdam decided to take the warning very seriously, he said.
The police have been criticized for the handling of the terrorist alarm. Police arrested seven people in Amsterdam last Thursday only to release all of them a day later. No explosives were found in house searches.
The six men and a woman, all of whom Dutch nationals of Moroccan descent, were no longer considered suspects, the authorities said on Friday.
In an interview with De Volkskrant, Welten dismissed the criticism as "predictable human short-sightedness."
He said during the 10-minute call on Wednesday night, the woman gave very reliable answers to the questions of the police regarding the culprits of the Madrid bombings exactly five years ago.
She gave names, addresses and descriptions of three men who she said were planning to travel to Amsterdam in a minibus and place explosives in three large shops close in the Arena Boulevard in the southeast of the city. One was allegedly related to one of the Madrid bombers.
Amsterdam police mounted a massive security operation on Thursday, closing all shops along the Arena Boulevard, evacuating the area, and carrying out house searches at four locations in Amsterdam. The venues reopened on Friday.
Welten said despite the release of the seven, the case is not yet closed. The woman who tipped off the police and the three men she described have not been found.
Welten also defended the decision to reveal the ethnic identity of the people arrested, saying it was needed to prevent rumors.
"Everyone knows the attacks in Madrid were carried out by Moroccans ... so it was a relevant fact. If we had not mentioned it, a flood of uncontrollable rumors would have started," Welten is quoted as saying.
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