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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Zarqa seethes after Amman bombings |
| 2005-11-11 |
| In the dusty Jordanian hometown of the man whose al Qaeda wing in Iraq says it carried out triple bombings of Amman hotels, neighbours and relatives had one message for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi: repent. Wednesday's attacks, the deadliest by Islamic militants in the pro-Western kingdom, killed at least 57 people in luxury hotels in the capital. It also shattered a sense of immunity from suicide attacks that have bloodied neighbouring Iraq. The bleak industrial town of Zarqa, Zarqawi's birthplace, was seething on Friday, two days after the bombings. Some residents said Zarqawi deserved death for attacks on his own country. Others vowed personally to hand him over to the security forces should he ever set foot in his hometown. "If I saw him, I would tell him to repent and try to learn about true religion that does not kill innocent civilians," said Hazem Madadha, 34, who said he was a childhood neighbour of Zarqawi. "I have very bad feelings toward him. He has hurt the name of Zarqa, Jordan and Islam," he added as he sat in a grocery shop chatting with two cousins of the Jordanian militant in the Ma'soum neighbourhood where Zarqawi grew up. Zarqawi's al Qaeda in Iraq group said it had attacked the hotels because they were used by U.S. and Israeli spies. Most of the casualties were Jordanian civilians. Born Ahmed Fadhil al-Khalayleh, Zarqawi's youth was shaped by the gritty poverty and politics of Zarqa, where Palestinian refugees are mingled with Bedouin tribesmen. Influenced by radical preachers he met there, Zarqawi left Jordan in 1989 for Afghanistan where fellow Islamist volunteers were fighting the "infidel" Soviet army. He was among the last of thousands of Arabs who, like Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden, went to fight in Afghanistan with U.S., Saudi and Pakistani assistance. Zarqawi was remembered by neighbours and shopkeepers in Zarqa mainly as a street thug who ultimately turned to religion in the 1980s, adopting a fiercely purist version of Islam. Some relatives doubted that Zarqawi had masterminded the bombings in his native Jordan, even if they believed him to be behind violence against U.S. forces and their allies in Iraq. "I'm not sure," said Youssef al-Khalayleh, a 26-year-old cousin. "If Abu Musab killed children, it is right to kill him. "We want to hear from him that he didn't have a hand in any of this. If he was involved in what happened in Amman, we want nothing to do with him," he said. "I love him, not as a terrorist but as a cousin," he added. Another cousin, 30-year-old Amjad al-Khalayleh, said he would consider Zarqawi "an enemy for all eternity" if it was proved that he was behind the Amman attacks. "Maybe he is powerful, but not in the way America shows him to be," he said. "If it is really Abu Musab, we hope he will be held accountable." Zarqawi became bin Laden's deputy in Iraq after he pledged allegiance to the overall al Qaeda leader in 2004. Believed to be in his late 30s, he has inspired a seemingly endless supply of militants from across the Arab world to blow themselves up in suicide missions in Iraq. In Zarqa, residents said security had been tightened since the attacks. Jordanian police were posted on the highway leading into town, monitoring motorists and inspecting trucks. Inside the city, many people were reluctant to talk about Zarqawi, who was sentenced to death in absentia in 2002 for plotting against U.S. and Israeli targets in the kingdom. Men in traditional Islamic dress almost universally declined to speak. One such man, a 61-year-old Pakistani toy merchant who said he had worked in Zarqa for years and spoke fluent Arabic, condemned the Amman bombings as the work of "infidels" but declined to say what he thought of Zarqawi. "I don't know anything," he said. "I just know about children's toys." |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 ... neighbours and relatives had one message for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi: repent. Yeah, "repent" before |
| Posted by: Zenster 2005-11-11 21:52 |