AMMAN, 24 October 2005 — Jordan jailed five militants yesterday for between three and five years each for plotting attacks on Israeli tourists in Jordan.
Chief State Security Judge Fawaz Baquor said the court found them guilty of “conspiring to carry out terrorist acts and plotting to perform illegal actions that could have jeopardized the kingdom’s ties with foreign countries”.
Court documents said the ring was plotting to attack Israeli and Western tourists in a hotel and a restaurant in the city of Irbid, some 90 km north of the capital, as well as buses carrying them to tourist sites.
Jordanian authorities arrested seven people in connection with the plot back in February, but the court found two of them not guilty.
Another member of the ring was sentenced in absentia to five years in jail. He is believed to be on the run in Syria.
Some of the militants, belonging to a group calling itself Islamic Jihad, were trained in Syria and Lebanon, the documents showed. They had pleaded not guilty, saying earlier confessions were made under duress.
