The Jacksonville International Airport was shut down for nearly five hours, stranding incoming planeloads of passengers on the tarmac, after police found two suspicious packages, one of which was deemed "destructive" and had to be deactivated offsite by a bomb squad. 
 
 The airport was evacuated shortly after 6 p.m. Tuesday when police found one suspicious package in the terminal and another in a nearby parking garage, Jacksonville Sheriff's Office spokesman Shannon Hartley told a news conference at 11 p.m., just after the airport reopened. 
 
 Hartley said one of the packages "had some destructive nature that it had to be taken offsite" but he did not elaborate. 
 
 He would not say which of the packages was destructive, and said he could not confirm local news media reports that two suspects had been arrested. 
 
 When authorities decided to evacuate the terminal and shut down the airport, some incoming planes were held up on the tarmac until buses could arrive to pick up the passengers, airport spokesman Michael Stewart said. He could not say how many planes were held up or for how long. Airport officials tweeted shortly after the evacuation that passengers on inbound flights would be bused to offsite hotels as transportation became available. 
 
 At least one plane was preparing to depart at the time of the evacuation, but Stewart said he did not know if it already had pulled away from the gate at the time of the evacuation. No flights were allowed to take off following the evacuation. 
 
 With the airport reopening, Stewart said individual airlines will determine how to restart their operations. "The airlines will work to ensure all passengers will receive their luggage," the airport tweeted on its official Twitter site. 
 
 Arlie Gentry, a passenger who arrived on a flight from New York via Baltimore, said the Southwest Airlines plane he was on landed just before 6:30 p.m. 
 
 "We moved from one spot on the runway to another spot," Gentry said. "They told us we couldn't get off the plane." 
 
 The pilots couldn't initially tell the passengers why, claiming they didn't know themselves, Gentry said. 
 
 Gentry said the delay was cumbersome and bothersome, but everyone on his plane remained calm. He said he was never really concerned for his safety, because the plane remained so far from the terminal. 
 
 Gentry said a bus arrived about 9:30 p.m. to start taking passengers to a nearby hotel. Gentry's sisters had been waiting in the parking lot for several hours and were planning to take him back to Gainesville. 
 
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 Associated Press writers David Fischer in Miami and Lisa J. Adams in Atlanta contributed to this report. ||||| The suspicions airport security officials had when they saw the metal canister grew when they learned about the man who brought it in from the Middle East: a scientist who prompted a bioterrorism scare, and ultimately went to prison, after he reported missing vials of plague samples seven years ago. 
 
 Passengers sleep and sit on the curbside at concourse J after being evacuated from the terminal at Miami International Airport in Miami, early Friday morning, Sept. 3, 2010. A spokesman for Miami International... (Associated Press) 
 
 Miami-Dade Fire Rescue trucks are shown on the arrival level at Miami International Airport in Miami, early Friday morning, Sept. 3, 2010. A spokesman for Miami International Airport says four of its... (Associated Press) 
 
 Miami-Dade Police and Fire Rescue vehicles are shown at the arrival level at Miami International Airport in Miami, early morning Friday, Sept. 3, 2010. A spokesman for Miami International Airport says... (Associated Press) 
 
 Cars are unable to enter Miami International Airport in Miami, Thursday, Sept. 2, 2010, as passengers were forced by Miami-Dade Police to evacuate the terminal. A bomb squad investigated a report of a... (Associated Press) 
 
 Passengers and crew members walk with their luggage outside the terminal after being evacuated at Miami International Airport in Miami, late Thursday, Sept. 2, 2010. A spokesman for Miami International... (Associated Press) 
 
 Passengers stand outside after being evacuated from the terminal at Miami International Airport in Miami, early morning Friday, Sept. 3, 2010. A spokesman for Miami International Airport says four of... (Associated Press) 
 
 Passengers head out of the terminal at Miami International Airport in Miami, early Friday morning, Sept. 3, 2010. A spokesman for Miami International Airport says four of its six concourses have been... (Associated Press) 
 
 A Miami-Dade Police and Fire Rescue officers are seen on the arrival level at Miami International Airport in Miami, early morning Friday, Sept. 3, 2010. A spokesman for Miami International Airport says... (Associated Press) 
 
 A Miami-Dade Police officer escorts passengers out of the terminal at Miami International Airport in Miami, early morning Friday, Sept. 3, 2010. A spokesman for Miami International Airport says four of... (Associated Press) 
 
 A Miami-Dade bomb squad truck leaves Miami International Airport in Miami, Friday, Sept. 3, 2010. A bomb squad investigated a report of a suspicious package after police evacuated four of six concourses... (Associated Press) 
 
 Officials shut down most of Miami International Airport overnight, roused nearby hotel guests from their beds and detained 70-year-old Thomas Butler until Friday morning, when he was released without charges, a senior law enforcement official said. 
 
 Tests on the canister found nothing dangerous, said the senior law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information. Homeland Security spokesman Nicholas Kimball said the item resembled a pipe bomb. 
 
 Butler's former lawyer said the incident appeared to be a "fantastic overreaction." 
 
 Butler is a world-renowned plague researcher who quickly became the focus of a federal investigation in 2003 when he reported that 30 vials of plague samples possibly had been stolen from his Texas Tech University lab. 
 
 He was later acquitted of smuggling and illegally transporting the potentially deadly germ, and of lying to federal agents about the missing vials. Jurors found Butler guilty of the mislabeling and unauthorized export of a FedEx package that contained plague samples he sent to Tanzania. 
 
 He was also convicted of fraud and theft and sentenced to two years in prison for defrauding Texas Tech about illegally negotiated contracts he had with pharmaceutical companies with which he also had clinical studies contracts. 
 
 Before Butler's trial, leading scientific organizations expressed concern about the criminal case against him and its effect on infectious disease research. Four Nobel laureates said in an open letter that Butler had been "subjected to unfair and disproportionate treatment." 
 
 Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor who represented Butler in his unsuccessful appeals, said the scientist "has spent his entire life protecting and healing people in some of the most impoverished areas of the world. He would never do anything that would endanger people." 
 
 The senior law enforcement official told the AP that a Transportation Security Administration inspector noticed an odd container around 9 p.m. Thursday as Butler was going through customs. He had arrived on a flight from the Middle East, where he had been teaching at a Saudi Arabian university. 
 
 The inspector ran Butler's name through a database and discovered that he had been tried on the plague-related charges. Officials decided to evacuate the airport and detain Butler, who cooperated fully, the law enforcement official said. 
 
 A Miami-Dade police bomb squad spent hours scouring the airport. Between 100 and 200 passengers were evacuated from four of the airport's six concourses. Airport roadways and a hotel near the airport's international terminal were closed down. Police and airport officials described the shutdown of the concourses as a public safety precaution. 
 
 Butler was released after tests showed that he, the container and his other belongings did not contain any hazardous biological material or explosives, the official said. 
 
 The canister was used to transport dead bacteria samples and was a legitimate experiment, said another government official who also requested anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation. Without naming Butler, the official said the scientist is a professor at Ross University in the Caribbean island of Dominica on a teaching assignment in Saudi Arabia. 
 
 Passengers, workers and others were allowed back in just as the airport was expecting the first of 1,500 passengers on flights between 4 and 6 a.m. alone _ and more thereafter. 
 
 "Everything's back to normal," airport spokesman Greg Chin told the AP. 
 
 Butler's 2003 report of missing plague vials set off a frantic search that ended when Butler gave FBI agents a written statement in which he admitted a "misjudgment" in not telling his supervisor that the vials had been "accidentally destroyed," according to court records. At trial, Butler testified that FBI agents forced him to make the admission to calm the public's fears. 
 
 Turley said he hoped to speak later Friday with the researcher. He said the Miami incident "appears to be a fantastic overreaction," and is "ironic because we defeated all the national security counts in the case." 
 
 "The only plague claim he was convicted of was a highly technical paper violation; he literally checked the wrong box on the form," Turley said. He added, "I find it strange to evacuate an airport because a guy was convicted of contractual violations with a university." 
 
 Peter Agre, a Nobel Prize-winning biochemist who supported Butler against the 2003 charges, said he'd be astonished if Butler did anything wrong. 
 
 "I suspect because he's Tom Butler and on a list as coming from Saudi Arabia, he's being scutinized and somebody pushed the panic button," Agre said in a telephone interview from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. 
 
 In Lubbock, Texas, no one answered the door at an address that a U.S. Department of Commerce website says is Butler's. 
 
 Butler was on supervised release from prison until 2008. He also agreed to retire from Texas Tech and to surrender his medical license. 
 
 He is not currently licensed in Texas, a spokeswoman for the Texas Medical Board said Friday. 
 
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 Associated Press photographer Alan Diaz in Miami, researcher Barbara Sambriski in New York, and writers Eileen Sullivan in Washington; Betsy Blaney in Lubbock, Texas; David Dishneau in Hagerstown, Md.; and Bill Cormier in Atlanta contributed to this report.
– A 39-year-old Jacksonville man is in custody in connection with the bomb scare that closed Jacksonville International Airport for five hours, jail records show. Zeljko Causevic has been charged with manufacturing, selling, or delivering a mail hoax bomb, and making a false report about a bomb, the Florida Times-Union reports. He was booked into jail at 1:30am, two and a half hours after the airport reopened, and will make his first court appearance this afternoon at 1pm. The airport was evacuated shortly after 6pm when police found one suspicious package in the terminal and another in a nearby parking garage. A sheriff's office spokesman said one of the packages "had some destructive nature that it had to be taken offsite" but did not elaborate, the AP reports. The closure left incoming planeloads of passengers stranded on the tarmac, and has led to the cancellation of more than 20 flights.