NEW YORK, May 9: The FBI released two teenage Muslim girls detained by it six weeks ago amid apprehensions that they were potential recruits for a suicide bomb plot that never materialized. The lawyers for the girls said on Saturday that the girls should not have been detained without any proper investigation.

The girls were picked up separately by authorities on March 24 and sent to a detention centre in Leesport, Pennsylvania. Adama Bah, 16, a Guinean immigrant, returned to her high school in Harlem on Friday to friends and teachers who insisted she was innocent. The second girl, who was not identified because she is a minor and was not charged with any crime, was granted a request allowing her to return to Bangladesh with her family.

Details of the case have remained sketchy and it has been marked by closed hearings, sealed government documents and gag orders for lawyers. But lawyers for both girls said the teens had no connection to any suicide bombing plots.

Bah’s lawyer, Natasha Pierre, told The New York Times in Saturday’s editions that her client “should never have been detained in the first place.”