Jordan Arrests Communist Party Leaders

King Hussein’s government has arrested the entire leadership of Jordan’s Communist Party, blaming it for an outbreak of student protests, the Lebanese Communist Party said today.

A party statement issued in Beirut said the arrests were made in pre-dawn raids on the homes of all 17 members of the Moscow-oriented Jordanian Communist Party in Amman, the capital, and other Jordanian cities last Friday.

Among those arrested were the first secretary of the Jordanian Communist Party, Fayek Warrad, and all 16 other members of the party’s Politburo, the statement said.

Jordanian authorities charged that the arrested Communists were behind the student riots at the Yarmouk University in Jordan’s northern city of Irbid last Thursday, the statement said.

“Dozens of other nationalists and progressive elements have been arrested over the students’ unrest stirred by the U.S. air aggression on Libya April 15,” it said.

It said the Yarmouk University riots broke out after Jordanian police prevented a student march on the U.S. and British embassies in Amman to protest the American air attack on Libya’s main cities of Tripoli and Benghazi. Britain allowed the United States to use warplanes based in England for the raid.

Three students were killed when police cracked down on the Yarmouk University protesters. Several others were arrested, but King Hussein later ordered their release.