CLEVELAND – Three Muslim men from the Middle East have been charged with plotting terrorist attacks against U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq and other countries.

One of the men, a citizen of both the U.S. and Jordan, also was accused of threatening to kill or injure President Bush, according to an indictment released Tuesday.

All three had lived in Toledo within the past year and were arrested over the weekend – two of them in Toledo, the third in Jordan, authorities said.

An unidentified person with a military background helped the U.S. government foil the plot by working with the suspects while secretly gathering evidence, according to the indictment.

The three pleaded not guilty in federal courts in Cleveland and Toledo. The most serious charges could bring life in prison.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and other officials refused to say whether an attack was imminent. FBI agents monitored the defendants for about a year and a half, assistant U.S. attorney Craig Morford said at a news conference in Cleveland.

Two of the men discussed plans to practice setting off explosives on July 4, 2005, so that the bombs would not be noticed, the indictment alleges.

The indictment says the group also traveled together to a shooting range to practice and studied how to make explosives. It alleges that at least one of the men researched and tried to obtain government grants and private funding for the training.

Mohammad Zaki Amawi, a citizen of both the U.S. and Jordan, is accused of threatening in conversations to kill or injure Bush. The 26-year-old also is charged with distributing information about making and using bombs.

The others are Marwan Othman El-Hindi, 42, a U.S. citizen born in Jordan; and Wassim I. Mazloum, 24, who came to the United States from Lebanon in 2000.

El-Hindi is accused of trying to get the U.S. citizen with a military background to travel with him in 2004 to the Middle East as part of a plot to establish a terrorism training center. The indictment identifies the military person only as “the trainer.”

All three men are charged with conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim or injure people or damage property in a foreign country. They were also charged with conspiracy to kill Americans and harboring or concealing terrorists.