DETROIT – Authorities filed a runaway juvenile petition against a Michigan teenager who flew to the Middle East to be with a man she met on the MySpace.com Internet site.

The paperwork was filed Monday in Tuscola County Family Court against Katherine Lester of Gilford, the court administrator, Kyle Jaskula, said.

At a hearing Monday, Judge Wallace Kent Jr. ordered Ms. Lester to give up her passport and undergo counseling. He did not rule on the validity of the petition.

If the judge finds that Ms. Lester was a runaway, she could be placed under court supervision until she turns 18. Such supervision usually means she would be monitored by a probation officer and made to undergo counseling, Mr. Jaskula said. Further hearings have not been scheduled.

Prosecutor Mark Reene said his office filed the petition out of concern for Ms. Lester’s safety after talking to her family and the sheriff’s office.

Ms. Lester, who turns 17 today, was en route to a Tel Aviv, Israel, airport when she was intercepted in Amman, Jordan, by American authorities who seized her passport and put her on a flight back to America. She was traveling to meet Abdullah Jimzawi, a 20-year-old high school dropout who lives with his parents in Jericho, West Bank. They met through MySpace.com, a social networking Web site whose popularity with teenagers has raised concerns among American authorities, with scattered accounts of sexual predators targeting minors on the site.

Mr. Jimzawi, in a recent interview with the Associated Press, said he loves the girl and the two planned to marry. She was to convert to Islam, he said.