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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Jordanian Police Arrest 7 Islamists |
| 2007-06-08 |
| Jordanian police arrested seven members of Jordan’s largest Muslim opposition group for allegedly setting up armed militias with the aim of destabilizing the kingdom, the group’s leader said yesterday. The latest arrests bring to nine the total number of activists with the Islamic Action Front, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood Movement, who were detained by police since May 22. Two Islamic Front members detained for the same reason 15 days ago were released last week, said the group’s secretary-general, Zaki Bani Ersheid. Government officials were not immediately available for comment. But chief government spokesman Nasser Judeh was quoted in the English language Jordan Times newspaper as saying that only five Islamic Action Front members were arrested for “threatening national security.” He did not elaborate but said that an investigation was under way. Bani Ersheid told The Associated Press that the seven were arrested late Wednesday in separate police raids on their homes in Zarqa, a low-income industrial city 27 kilometers northeast of the capital, Amman. Zarqa, a hotbed for Islamic militants, is the hometown of former Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, who was killed in a US airstrike a year ago. “Police officials told their families while arresting my colleagues that they were involved in forming armed militias,” Bani Ersheid said. “But the allegation is completely false,” he said. “We believe that the arrests are only aimed at undermining the credibility of the Islamic Action Front ahead of the municipal and parliamentary elections in Jordan,” he added, referring to town elections scheduled for July and parliamentary polls slated for later this year. The Islamic Action Front commands 17 seats in the 110-member Lower House of Parliament. The group is a fiery critic of the government’s policies, primarily its quest for a peaceful Arab-Israeli settlement. The front rejects Jordan’s 1994 peace treaty with Israel and has often called on the government to annul it. Meanwhile, Jordan’s King Abdallah vowed at a military academy graduation ceremony that his kingdom will “always remain an oasis of security and stability and a role model for progress, able to confront challenges and realize achievements.” Meanwhile, a military prosecutor has indicted a Jordanian man on charges of recruiting fighters to join the Iraqi insurgency at the request of Al-Qaeda, judicial sources said. Awni Al-Mansi was indicted on three counts, including the illegal possession of weapons and attempted murder. He faces the death penalty if found guilty but no date has been set yet for the trial. The charge sheet said Mansi helped several would-be rebels infiltrate neighboring Syria for the eventual dispatch to Iraq, it said. He was arrested in January during a raid by Jordanian forces on a hide-out in the northern city of Irbid, in which a number of security agents were wounded in a shootout with Mansi and his accomplice Suleiman Al-Anjadi. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 You're supposed to kill people on the west side of the Jordan, not the east side. |
| Posted by: Gary and the Samoyeds 2007-06-08 08:31 |