Three students held in ‘terror plot’ emergency

THREE medical students were detained yesterday and a major US road was shut for over 12 hours after a woman overheard a suspected terror plot being discussed.

Police closed Alligator Alley, an interstate highway in south Florida, and blew up a suspect package as explosives experts investigated two cars in which the men were travelling.

A law enforcement official in Washington said that authorities had not found a terrorist connection and that the three men appeared to be medical students going to a medical conference in Miami.

The official said the men were originally from Jordan, Iran and Pakistan.

At least two are naturalised Americans.

The security alert started last night when the men, who were of Middle Eastern appearance, were heard in a cafe laughing at the September 11 anniversary commemorations and saying that Americans would “cry on 9/13.”

They men were later stopped after driving through a tollbooth without paying.

Bomb-sniffing dogs alerted authorities to material in both cars.

But no explosives were immediately found, said a spokesman for the Florida Department of Law.

Live television broadcasts from helicopters hovering over the remote scene in the vast Everglades sawgrass plain showed two cars, one white, one black, stopped on the two-lane highway with doors open.

At one point, a bomb-squad robot rolled up to the black car as police tried to determine if there were explosives inside.

Police said they had been detained but had not been placed under arrest.

Eunice Stone, who saw the men in a restaurant in Calhoun, Georgia, said they talked about going to Miami and “bringing it down.”

America has been on a major terror alert since the September 11 commemorations earlier this week.