AMMAN, 16 July 2005 — Muslim militants are increasingly using Syria as a clandestine haven for fighters heading to Iraq, Jordanian officials said yesterday, adding that they had no proof the Damascus government condoned such activities. Security officials in US ally Jordan said interrogations of 12 Jordanian fighters arrested this year had revealed links with Syrian Islamists promoting jihad (holy war) in Iraq.
“We are finding that many of these people are getting help from Syrian radicals who are helping them to undergo training and (get) financing and even equipment like explosives detonators they smuggle back to Jordan or use in Iraq,” said one official.
Officials and security sources say they have no evidence the networks were operating with the consent of Syria’s secular Baathist government, which battled Sunni Muslim radicals in the 1980s and has cracked down on similar groups in recent months. Damascus has repeatedly denied US charges that it allows militants battling US forces in Iraq to use its territory as a staging ground.
The Jordanian officials say young Arab fighters in Iraq were developing strong bonds among each other that helped them recruit more fighters in their countries of origin. “They meet in Iraq and those who return home cement their ties with their associates in other Arab countries and draw others back to Iraq,” one security official said.
Seven Jordanians ideologically affiliated to Al-Qaeda were arrested in May during raids across Jordan, while five others from the city of Salt have been in jail since February. They were indicted this week on charges ranging from conspiracy to conduct terrorist attacks to illegal arms possession. The conspiracy charge alone carries a death penalty.
Prosecutors say one of the defendants, Khaled Sarqous, 33, had fought in Iraq and had liaised with a Syrian identified only as Abu Janah, whom they described as a mastermind behind training and financing Jordanian suicide bombers bound for Iraq. Among them was Raed Mansour Al-Bannaa, suspected perpetrator of Iraq’s deadliest suicide bombing, which killed 125 people, mostly Shiites, in Baghdad on Feb. 28, the prosecutors say.
