Five men who were arrested outside the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria have been released without charge by counter-terrorism police after they were questioned and their homes searched.
The men, all of Bangladeshi heritage and in their 20s, were stopped by armed Civil Nuclear Constabulary officers on Monday afternoon, just hours after the announcement that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden had been killed in Pakistan.
Officers stopped and questioned the men – who live 250 miles away in Romford, Essex – on the road leading to the nuclear plant's main entrance.
They said they stopped the car they were travelling in as "they appeared to be taking photographs and acting suspiciously". But it emerged that they had taken a wrong turn.
They were initially detained under Section 41 of the Terrorism Act, but after they were questioned by officers from the North West Counter Terrorism Unit in Manchester and their houses were searched, officers decided they could be released without charge.
The men told police they were travelling along the road only because their in-car satellite navigation system had taken them the wrong way on the remote road just off the coast of Cumbria, close to the Lake District.
The plant's main gate had been locked down for security reasons by officers from Cumbria Constabulary on Tuesday, with a roadblock set up on the main road.
But the entrance was reopened that evening, with the plant operating as normal.
A Sellafield spokeswoman said: "The site's main gate is now open as normal. It reopened at 5.30pm on Tuesday"