| Submit your comments on this article |
| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Jayousi and Co sentenced to death |
| 2006-02-16 |
| A court on Wednesday sentenced Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of the insurgent group in Iraq that calls itself Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and eight other men to death for plotting chemical attacks against sites in Jordan, including the United States Embassy. Mr. Zarqawi, who is not in custody, and three others were sentenced to death in absentia. But the plot's suspected mastermind, Azmi al-Jayousi, and four co-defendants were in the courtroom when the judge handed down the sentence for the plot in 2004, which security officials reported they had foiled before it could be carried out. It was the third death penalty that Jordanian courts have issued for Mr. Zarqawi, a Jordanian who runs the most notorious insurgent group in Iraq. His previous death sentences were for the assassination of an American diplomat, Lawrence Foley, in Amman in 2002, and for a failed suicide attack on the Jordanian-Iraqi border in 2004. On hearing the verdict, the five condemned men who were in the court shouted their support for Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, and denounced the judges as pro-Israeli tyrants. "The Jews are your masters!" yelled the men. The three judges picked up their papers and walked out, leaving the defendants shouting. "Bin Laden's organization is rising and we will be back!" they yelled. They also turned on a Syrian defendant who was acquitted in the case, Muhammad Salmeh Shaaban, and accused him of being an informer. "Your blood will be shed!" the convicted men shouted at him. The court also sentenced two other defendants to prison terms of one to three years, and acquitted another two defendants. The men — Jordanians, Syrians and Palestinians — were charged with conspiring to attack sites in Jordan by setting off a cloud of toxic chemicals that would have killed thousands of people, according to prosecution estimates. The defendants were also charged with conspiring to commit acts of terrorism and with possession and manufacture of explosives. The prosecution told the court that Mr. Zarqawi had sent more than $118,000 to buy two vehicles that the plotters were to use in the attack. It said suicide bombers were to drive the vehicles, loaded with explosives and chemicals, onto the grounds of the General Intelligence Department in Amman and detonate them. Other targets of the plot were the United States Embassy, the Jordanian prime minister's office and various intelligence and military court officials. The indictment said that when investigators conducted an experiment with small amounts of the chemicals found with the defendants, they found it produced "a strong explosion and a poison cloud that spread over an area of 500 square yards." From the geographical data that the accused mastermind, Mr. Jayousi, a Jordanian, had collected, it appeared he aimed to kill thousands of people in the chemical attack, the indictment said. Eight of the defendants were accused of belonging to a previously unknown group, Kataeb al Tawhid, or Battalions of Monotheism, which security officials say is headed by Mr. Zarqawi and linked to Al Qaeda. Monotheism, or tawhid in Arabic, is a central doctrine of Islam. But some militant groups like Mr. Zarqawi's have interpreted it to mean that anyone who does not rule by Islamic law is an apostate. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |