AMMAN, 17 June 2004 — Jordan’s state security court yesterday sentenced nine defendants, all but one of them absent, to 15 years in prison for conspiring to carry out terror acts and belonging to Al-Qaeda network.
But court president, Fawwaz Bkur, commuted the sentence against the only one in court, Jordanian Ahmad Al-Riyati, to seven-and-a-half years with hard labor “to give him a chance to improve himself and because he is a bread-winner”, an AFP correspondent said.
Riyati, 35, was among 15 people on trial here since October. Eight of the absentees were also given 15 years but one was killed in a shootout in April. The remaining six, all Jordanians who lived in Iran, had died under unknown circumstances and in an unidentified location, prosecutors said in March, and Bkur dropped charges against them.
One of the absentees sentenced is Najmeddin Faraj Ahmad, also known as Mulla Krekar, the founder of Ansar Al-Islam, or “supporters of Islam”, who was also being investigated in Norway on charges of funding terrorism and inciting murder. Riyati and the fugitives sentenced here yesterday were all accused of “conspiring to carry out terror acts.” He was specifically charged with having received military training in Afghanistan and training others in Tehran to “prepare poisons and produce explosives for assassinating heads of the Jordanian intelligence service.”
