Jordan Foils Plot To Attack U.S. interests:
10 Armed With Weapons, Explosives Arrested In Raids In, Around Amman

July 5, 2002
By Nicholas Pelham in Amman

Jordan has foiled a fresh plot to attack US and Israeli interests, according to the kingdom's military prosecutor.

Colonel Mahmoud Obeidat said the attacks were averted after 10 Jordanians armed with weapons and explosives were arrested in raids in and around Amman, the capital.

According to the suspects' lawyer, Mohammed Duwaik, the group is led by Wáil al-Shalabi, 34, a Palestinian Jordanian. Mr Duwaik said he confessed to returning to Jordan after fleeing the fighting in Afghanistan following the American-led overthrow of the Taliban. He was arrested in April at his home in Amman on suspicion of recruiting Jordanians to attack US installations, and providing training in bomb-making.

Mr Duwaik said suspected associates were arrested in May and June in raids on Suhab, a run-down satellite of the capital, and the ancient Christian town of Madaba, south of Amman.

They include Omar al-Hassan, 30, who holds American nationality, and Mohammed al-Mulluh, 22, who graduated from the Islamic University in Saudi Arabia's holy city of Medina - identified as one of the sources of Osama bin Laden's puritanical ideology.

Sceptics argue that pro-western Arab regimes are playing to the American gallery in their eagerness to show they are co-operating with Washington's war on terrorism. Intelligence chiefs in Morocco have given unprecedented briefings to western media about arrests of al-Qaeda suspects accused of plotting to attack US and British warships in the Strait of Gibraltar.

Meanwhile the Saudi authorities have reversed months of denials that bin Laden followers w ere active in the kingdom. They said 13 people - 11 Saudis, a Sudanese and an Iraqi - had been detained for attempting to shoot down a US military aircraft with a shoulder-fired missile.

The Jordanians have not been charged with membership of al-Qaeda, but the arrests appear to fit an emerging pattern of Arab fighters fleeing from Afghanistan and Europe to forge new links in the Arab world. At least one of the Saudis in Moroccan custody, Zouhair Hilal Mohamed Tabiti, has reportedly confessed to having been recruited by Mr bin Laden in Afghanistan to reconnoitre along the north African coast.

News of the arrests in Jordan has been slow to trickle into the kingdom's government-controlled press. Government ministers have been reluctant to give details of their anti-terrorist operations, aware that anti-American sentiment on Jordan's streets has risen markedly in anger at Washington's declared aim of changing the regimes in neighbouring Iraq and the Palestinian territories.

Jordan has been one of Washington's closest Arab allies since the September 11 attacks in the US. It is the first Arab state to sign a free-trade agreement with Washington, and the US Congress recently increased aid to Amman to $450m (£294m) a year.

On Wednesday the IMF approved Jordan's two-year standby plan to cut subsidies and pensions as part of deepening reforms ahead of the country's meeting with its Paris club creditors on Monday to reschedule its debt.
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