A passenger who allegedly had an Islamic State (Isis) flag tattooed on his arm was removed from a plane in Sweden after Cabin crew reportedly refused to fly with him. Staff on the Norwegian flight to Greece spotted the incriminating ink which they believed to be the terror group's black and white symbol, or a verse from the Koran, on 21 July's 9pm flight from Stockholm's Arlanda Airport to Heraklion.

After they told the captain they did not want the man aboard with them, he was removed along with his female companion and the flight took off around an hour after it was scheduled to do so.

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"The pilot has full authority to remove whoever he wants from the plane," Mats Eriksson at Stockholm Police told Swedish language newspaper The Local, but he added that while officers were present when the man was escorted from the plane it was "not a police matter".

The man was neither detained by police nor suspected of any crime. It is unclear whether the man was able to board a later flight.

His removal came as Europe remained on edge following the Bastille day attack in the French city of Nice. The driver of the lorry, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, drove into a crowd celebrating on the city's Promenade des Anglais 14 July, killing 84 and injuring dozens more.

Five suspects appeared in court in France charged with terror offences in relation to the attack on 22 July. The four men and one woman, aged between 22 and 40, are accused of helping prepare the terror attack, claimed by so-called Islamic State.

Three of the suspects, identified as Franco-Tunisians Ramzi A and Mohamed Oualid G, and a Tunisian named Chokri C, were charged as accomplices in "murder by a group with terror links".

An Albanian man named as Artan and a woman who is a French-Albanian dual nationality, identified as Enkeldja, are suspected of providing Lahouaiej-Bouhlel with a pistol and were charged with "breaking the law on weapons in relation to a terrorist group".

Isis Islamic State