May 24 (Bloomberg) -- Three terrorism suspects in the U.K. who were subject to orders restricting their travel have gone missing, British police said.

The men are suspected by police of wanting to go abroad to target British and U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Scotland Yard took the unprecedented step of identifying the three men publicly as Lamine Adam, 26, his brother Ibrahim Adam, 20, and Cerie Bullivant, 24. Police also published their photographs.

``I am asking members of the public who actually see these men not to approach them but to call the police immediately,'' Peter Clarke, the U.K.'s national coordinator of terrorism investigations, said in an e-mailed statement. ``We know these men are associates and may well be together.''

Control orders have been used in the U.K. since 2005 when they were made possible by the Prevention of Terrorism Act. They are imposed on people suspected of links to international terrorism when the evidence isn't strong enough for police to charge them with a crime. Conditions vary in each case and can amount to house arrest.

The three missing men are ``not considered at this time to represent a direct threat to the public in the U.K.,'' Home Secretary John Reid told lawmakers in Parliament. ``But they are dangerous and we cannot take anything for granted.''

Their control orders had been designed to prevent the men traveling abroad and had required them to surrender their passports and report to a police station every day, Reid said. They all failed to report on May 22, he said.

Bombs Plot

In the past, suspects subject to control orders haven't been named by the authorities. There are 17 control orders currently in place, according to the Home Office.

Lamine and Ibrahim Adam are the brothers of Anthony Garcia, 25, who was jailed for life on April 30 at the Central Criminal Court in London for conspiring to commit a terrorist attack in the U.K., London's Evening Standard reported. That sentence followed the U.K.'s longest terrorism trial, which exposed plots by Garcia and his co-conspirators to blow up a shopping center, nightclub and synagogues.

The Adam brothers were born in Algeria. Bullivant was born in the U.K. They were placed under control orders because there was ``solid intelligence'' they planned to go abroad and become insurgents, Alex Carlile, the U.K.'s independent reviewer of anti-terrorism legislation, told the British Broadcasting Corp. Carlile said that, when controls orders were imposed, the courts always had to consider whether the restrictions placed on a suspect were compatible with human rights legislation.

``Control orders are far from being the best option for tackling terrorist suspects,'' Reid told lawmakers. ``But we, the Government, operate under the constraints imposed on us by Parliament, the courts and the law. Control orders are as far as we can go.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Nick Allen in London at nallen14@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: May 24, 2007 07:31 EDT