Jordan 'terror plot' thwarted

Police today killed one of Jordan’s most wanted al-Qaida suspects and arrested a second in a pre-dawn raid that authorities said had thwarted a terror plot against this key US ally in the Middle East.

Suleiman Ghayad al-Anjadi, who was on Jordan’s “most wanted” terror list, was gunned down in a shoot-out with police at his hideout in the Matlaa’ neighbourhood in the northern city of Irbid, security officials said.

Ramadan Mustafa al-Mansi, also an alleged al-Qaida militant, was at the same one-storey brick house and was detained following the battle, which lasted several hours and in which several police officers were slightly wounded, the state Petra news agency reported.

Elite intelligence and anti-terrorism squads stormed the cell’s hideout because of “information on plans by al-Qaida targeting the Jordanian arena,” Petra said, quoting an unidentified security official. It did not elaborate.

Security officials said that al-Mansi, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin, was being questioned and more information on the alleged plot would emerge later.

The security officials would not elaborate on how high up al-Anjadi and al-Mansi were in al-Qaida’s hierarchy in Jordan.

Al-Anjadi was accused of trying to break a top al-Qaida official in Jordan - Azmi al-Jayousi – out of prison last March. Police thwarted the escape plot and al-Anjadi was tried in absentia a month later.

Al-Jayousi had been sentenced to death last year for a 2004 plot to attack the US Embassy, the prime minister’s office and various intelligence and military officials with toxic chemicals.

A close US ally and Israel’s peace partner, moderate Jordan has seen numerous terror plots over recent years – most of them foiled – and has arrested scores of Islamic militants.

The country was the homeland of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida’s branch in Iraq, who was killed in a US airstrike north of Baghdad in June.

Al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for Jordan’s deadliest terror attack - suicide bombings in three Amman hotels in November 2005 that killed 60 people and three Iraqi suicide bombers.

Today’s gunbattle began when the two al-Qaida suspects opened fire at special forces that came to arrest them, the security officials said.

Police returned fire, killing al-Anjadi. Al-Mansi surrendered later.

Outside the bullet-scarred house in the poor Matlaa’ neighbourhood, anti-terror squads stood on guard as forensic teams searched the vicinity. A small part on the side of the house was demolished, apparently to make way for the raiding forces.

Police seized several machine guns, pistols, ammunition, explosives, gas cylinders and computers from the house, the security officials said.

Neighbours said they did not know who lived in the house and that they woke up to a barrage of gunfire and wailing sirens from police vehicles.

A woman answering the telephone at al-Mansi’s home in a squalid Palestinian refugee camp in Irbid said he “disappeared 20 days ago”. She identified herself as his mother, but declined to give her name.

Isam al-Mansi, who said he was the suspect’s brother, asserted that a “group of masked men threatened us that they will kill me, if my brother didn’t surrender to them.” He said the family had reported the threat to authorities.