Arrests in Jordan Led to Travel Warning

The arrest of 13 suspected terrorists in Jordan helped set off alarm bells that Americans traveling or residing abroad could face heightened personal danger during the holiday period, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

The officials said those taken into custody are believed to have ties to anti-American Saudi militant Osama bin Laden, the man suspected of masterminding last year’s deadly bomb attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

After the arrests, which apparently took place last week, the State Department on Saturday issued a worldwide travel warning declaring it had “credible information that terrorists are planning attacks, specifically targeting American citizens,” through the beginning of the new year. The warning urges Americans to avoid large crowds, keep low profiles and vary routes and times of all required travel.

“We can say the suspects were arrested in connection with threats against Americans, and we believe they are members of the Bin Laden terrorist group,” said a White House official who requested anonymity. “His network has a global reach and has proved it can carry out deadly attacks against Americans.”

The warning was issued because the threat to Americans went well beyond “the Bin Laden cell” arrested in Jordan, another U.S. official said. Because Bin Laden-trained groups have been known to strike at targets well outside the Muslim world, the travel advisory was made global.

This official stressed that the warning was not meant to alarm Americans but was a case of taking precautions in light of hard information that pointed to potential danger.

“We’re trying to act responsibly,” the White House official said.

State Department spokesman James Foley said those arrested were believed to be part of Bin Laden’s terrorist group Al Qaida. Two Egyptian-based terrorist organizations, the Islamic Group and Al Jihad, are also considered part of a Bin Laden network. All three issued an Islamic religious command, known as a fatwa, in February 1998, declaring it the religious duty of all Muslims to wage war on U.S. citizens, military and civilian alike, anywhere in the world.

Foley said late Wednesday that U.S. diplomats were in touch with the government of Pakistan after the arrest of a dual U.S.-Pakistani national suspected of having links to Bin Laden. The suspect, who was not immediately identified, was taken into custody in Peshawar, a Pakistani provincial capital and a gateway to Afghanistan’s rugged eastern mountains, where Bin Laden maintains a training facility and is believed to have taken refuge.

Another U.S. official said it was unclear what danger the individual may have posed.

The head of the State Department’s counter-terrorism office, Michael Sheehan, met with an Afghan government representative at the United Nations in New York earlier this week, warning him that the United States would hold his government personally responsible for any terrorist attacks against Americans.

In Amman on Wednesday, Jordanian Prime Minister Abdul Raouf Rawabdeh provided details about the suspected terrorists arrested in his country, telling parliament that police had detained 13 people--11 Jordanians, an Iraqi and an Algerian--who had received weapons and explosives training in Afghanistan and were planning attacks inside the kingdom.

Rawabdeh said members of the group were arrested after returning to the country from Afghanistan and during the early stages of planning a series of attacks inside Jordan. Three others are still at large outside Jordan, he added.

A Jordanian official said the arrests were made last week, and U.S. counter-terrorism experts said the operation was carried out by Jordanian security services acting without U.S. assistance.

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Times staff writer Rebecca Trounson in Jerusalem contributed to this report.