Laptops in Turkish plane crash said to contain US military secrets

According to a newspaper report the laptops contained U.S. military secrets linked to plans for a sophisticated airborne radar system to be used by the Turkish air force.�

Four Boeing employees were among the nine people who died when the plane crashed near Schiphol airport near Amsterdam on Feb. 25 after a problem with its altimeter.

The prosecutor’s office in Haarlem, west of Amsterdam, "gave instructions that four Boeing laptops should be removed from the plane," a spokeswoman for the office told AFP.

"We then handed them over to the U.S. embassy in The Hague and 48 hours after the accident they were returned to Boeing."

The four Boeing employees were returning from Turkey after a mission for the U.S. Department of Defense.

"According to Boeing they had with them four laptops containing confidential and sensitive information," the spokeswoman said.

"The United States asked us to hand them over."

The newspaper De Telegraaf said the laptops contained Boeings plans to build a sophisticated airborne radar station, named "Peace Eagle", to be installed in a Turkish airforce Boeing 737.

The newspaper said that FBI agents stationed in Frankfurt, Germany had been sent to secure the laptops, but the prosecutors office spokeswoman said that "no U.S. government representative had boarded" the wreckage.