Jordan has detained at least seven Islamists as part of a countrywide crackdown after a banned group held a rare rally urging holy war against the West, activists said yesterday. The staunchly pro-Western kingdom has kept a closer eye on mosques in recent months, arresting several preachers whose praise of suicide bombers in Iraq and Israel it says inflames anti-American sentiment. The latest arrests followed a rally by Hizbut Tahrir in a central Amman mosque after Friday prayers in which an unidentified leader railed against the United States, Israel and Arab rulers he slammed as corrupt.âThe arrests are widespread and in more than one city across the country,â one activist, who asked not to be named, told Reuters. He said it was the biggest crackdown in recent years. The most prominent detainee is pharmacist Saleh Al-Chalabi, a leader of the Jordanian offshoot of Hizbut Tahrir, a secretive party believed by analysts to be the most active radical Islamist movement in Central Asia. Hizbut Tahrir activists said colleagues Khaled Kasasbeh and Tareq Al-Ahmar were arrested shortly after the rally in the mosque in a mainly Palestinian quarter of the city that is an Islamist stronghold. Mohammad Al-Fuqaha, Salem Abu Subaitan, Imad Al-Azeidah and Mahmoud Zuhairi, also members of the group, were arrested over the past two days, they said. Jordanian forces raided six other homes in search of other members but the wanted men escaped.
An Interior Ministry official confirmed members of the outlawed party had been arrested but gave no details. Witnesses said over 1,000 Hizbut Tahrir supporters attended the rally, in which the speaker gave a half-hour speech.