South African police Commissioner Jackie Selebi has said that they arrested several suspects allegedly linked to al-Qaeda in Jordan, Syria and Britain,the local newspaper Star reported on Thursday.

Selebi said the arrests in South Africa, just five days before the April 14 general elections, had resulted in a domino effect.

Selebi told the National Assembly's safety and security committee on Wednesday that both Jordan and Syria share borders with Iraq, where the United States and Britain have been involved in a bloody occupation after overthrowing Saddam Hussein's regime.

While Syria is seen by the West as one of the world's "rogue" states, allegedly harboring al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's operatives, Jordan is reputedly Washington's closest ally in the Arab world.

Selebi was quoted by the report as saying: "We arrested some people who had evil intentions against this country - we did not tell anybody - five days before the election. We got these people to leave.

"The result is that you saw in Jordan, in and around those days,a number of people arrested who were called al-Qaeda. A number of people were (also) arrested in Syria as a result of our operation," he added.

In part of the operation in London, he said, the British police found boxes and boxes of South African passports in the home of one of these people, or an associate of these people, which says to me there must be a link that people are able to acquire these documents.

Selebi made the remarks to the committee to illustrate the battle the government is facing to stamp out rampant corruption inthe Department of Home Affairs.