AMMAN, 6 December 2004 — US forces detained five Jordanian nationals in Iraq on Friday, Culture Minister and official government spokesperson Asma Khader announced yesterday. “The five nationals worked as drivers of trucks that carried cars for the Iraqi market,” Khader was quoted as saying by the official news agency, Petra.
The Jordan Embassy in Baghdad “has established contacts with a view to ensuring the release and return home of the five drivers”, she said, without elaboration as to the reasons cited for their detention.
Scores of Jordanian drivers have been the target for abductions, and sometimes killing, by armed Iraqi groups over the past few months.
The militants usually cited cooperation with the US-led multinational forces as the reason behind the kidnappings.
The Jordanian authorities closed the border crossing point with Iraq at Karameh on Saturday following an explosion of a car bomb at Iraq’s Tribel border post, where a number of US soldiers were reportedly killed and wounded.
15 Suspected Terrorists to Go on Trial
Meanwhile, 15 suspected terrorists, including three Saudis, go on trial before Jordan’s State Security Court today on charges of planning attacks on targets inside Jordan including the US Embassy, judicial sources said yesterday.
They said one of the defendants of the network called “Abu Sayyaf Group” is Saud Mohammad Khalayleh, a cousin of the Jordanian fugitive Ahmad Fadeel Khalayleh, better known as Abu Mussab Zarqawi who is sought for attacks on US-led forces in Iraq.
The cell also includes three Saudi nationals who are at large and will be tried in absentia, the sources said.
According to the indictment statement, the 15 people originally planned to go to Afghanistan after US forces entered the country in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
“But, after they found that their mission was impossible, they replaced it with carrying terror attacks on American targets in Jordan including the US Embassy,” the statement said.
