AMMAN, 11 July 2003 — A Jordanian court jailed the country’s former chief spy for eight years yesterday in a landmark trial that has raised questions about the extent of corruption at the heart of the political establishment.
State news agency Petra said retired Lt. Gen. Samih Batikhi, once the country’s most feared security official, was convicted of fraud, forgery and misuse of public funds by a court set up by the security agency he used to run. The former spy controller was a confidant of the late King Hussein, accompanying him and the present monarch on trips abroad even as the complex swindle was being perpetrated in 1999 and 2000.
Prosecutors said Batikhi, who guided King Abdullah’s smooth transition to the throne after the death of his father in 1999, masterminded the scam through businessman Majd Shamayleh, who secured over 344 million dinars ($485 million) from three banks.
Local banks claimed they were duped into financing 800 million dinars’ worth of fake projects under a program to upgrade the intelligence agency’s data communiciations system. The court ordered Batikhi to return 17 million dinars it said he had siphoned off in the process. Batikhi, whose powerful position enabled him to use secret accounts with impunity, denied he knew Shamayleh personally, and argued he had once imprisoned the businessman briefly after he tried to swindle a bank.
Government officials have strongly denied suggestions that the affair was simply a political purge to settle old scores among establishment figures.
But critics have been skeptical about Jordan’s ability to safeguard a legal process in a country where political nepotism and back door dealings have spawned several smaller graft scandals in recent years.
Batikhi’s defense team said it was inconceivable that a man charged with overseeing the turbulent period before and after King Hussein’s death would have had the time to manage such complex financial transactions.
Defense lawyer Ahmad Obeidat, himself a former spy chief, says justice had not been served by the court’s lack of impartiality. The judge who passed the Batikhi’s sentence was also the main public interrogator.
Lawyers said the trial also raised questions as to why the former spymaster was put in the dock while Shamayleh’s prominent bank and business associates were left off the hook.
Shamayleh voluntarily returned back to Jordan last year after months as a fugitive in Australia to face charges of embezzlement and fraud. He will stand trial later this month.
