AMMAN, 12 May 2003 — Jordan’s military prosecutor charged yesterday 11 people, including Libyans and Syrians, with the murder of US diplomat Laurence Foley in October, judicial sources said.
If found guilty, the suspects, seven of whom are on the run, could face the death sentence for “plotting to carry out terrorist activities leading to the death of an individual”, according to the charge sheet obtained by AFP. Their trial is scheduled to start later this month.
Four of them, including key suspects Salem Saad Salem Bin Soued and Yasser Fathi Ibrahim Freihat, were also charged of “illegal possession of Kalashnikov rifles with the intent to use them illicitly,” it said.
But the charge sheet, a copy of which was received by AFP, did not mention any ties to Al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden’s terror network, although Information Minister Mohamad Adwan made such a link in December.
Foley, a senior executive who worked for the US Agency For International Development (USAID), was gunned down as he was preparing to leave home for work in a residential neighborhood of Amman, becoming the first US diplomat killed in Jordan since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the US.
